“I sort of do. You see when these chaps get partly civilised, although it deteriorates them as savages it has often the effect of making them all unconsciously cling to the white man. Now this one is a Fingo, and his traditions would make all that way. He no more wants to set up a universal black Power than you or I do; he knows where he, and all his like, would come in under it. At present he’s paid to preach it but I’m perfectly certain he no more believes it possible than you or I do either. So let’s make use of him if we can; though I doubt if we can, for they don’t seem to trust him overmuch here from what we’ve just seen.”
“‘Can the Ethopian change his skin?’” quoted Elvesdon, sourly.
The day wore on. Both men—Elvesdon, especially, being the younger—were wistfully trying to glean from the talk they could overhear, what was going on outside. They tried questioning those around them but without result. They asked too, about their fellow prisoner, the young Police trooper, who had been so arbitrarily separated from them; but beyond the fact that no harm had been done him, they could get no further. The while both were sizing up every chance for effecting an escape, but even had such offered it was out of the question they should have availed themselves of it at the price of abandoning a fellow-countryman—a fellow-countryman, too, who was doubly helpless, in that, being a new comer, he was entirely unversed in the language and ways of those who held him in durance.
Chapter Twenty Nine.
A Devil-Deed.
The third day of their captivity had dawned, and waned. It seemed that those around had grown rather more used to them, for they would chat at times, while dexterously evading any attempts to extract news. But it struck them that there was an atmosphere of tension, of expectation, as though events were expected on the outside. Moreover the number of armed men about the kraal seemed to have diminished by eight-tenths.
With the chief, Nteseni, they could get no speech, although they repeatedly asked to see him. Moreover, did either or both of them catch sight of a face they knew, that face was promptly turned away, and the owner of it never risked the chance of their seeing it again. So far this was a good augury they agreed, for had their deaths been already decided upon it would not matter whose faces they recognised or whose they did not. By this time they had almost got used to the strangeness of the feeling that they were captives in their own land; that where they were accustomed to lord it they were now obliged to obey. Many times, too, and oft, they speculated as to what course would have been adopted by those who had not been required to share their captivity.
“Edala has got her head screwed on the right way,” Thornhill had said, on one of these early occasions. “Depend upon it she will have warned everybody within hail. What d’you think, Elvesdon? Will Prior have had the sense to wire sharp to Police headquarters and laager up your place?”