“Au! Nkose has an open hand,” answered the man in a gratified tone. “And I think that the two whom you seek will return with you.”
“The two whom you seek,” he had said. Not until afterwards did it occur to Hyland to wonder how it was the speaker knew that there were only two left to seek. Here again that wonderful, mysterious native telegraphy must have come in.
Chapter Thirty One.
Manamandhla’s Story.
To the said ‘two’ it seemed that life could contain no further horrors, and that they had better get it over and done with, and this held good especially of Elvesdon, as the younger and less hardened. Thornhill was speculating as to how it was that Manamandhla, so far from hastening their death, seemed to have averted it. The tumult had not been renewed, and nobody had come near them. Then later on they had been allowed to sit outside, and even to stroll about a little as usual. But there seemed to be very few people at the kraal, and, noting this, they looked at each other as though inspired by a new hope.
The day wore on. The unrolled panorama of bush and cliff and spur grew purple and dim in the declining sun. In the mind of both was the thought—Would they see the set of another sun?
“Look here, Thornhill,” said Elvesdon as though seized with a sudden impulse. “I don’t know whether either of us will get away from here alive, or both. But I want to say something. In case we do, have you any objection to my trying to win your daughter’s love?”
If the other was startled he did not show it. The two were seated upon a rock just outside the kraal, watching the changing lights over the far-away kloofs as the sun sank behind the highest ridge to the westward. Both were scraping together the last shreds of their remaining stock of tobacco, which might perhaps afford them a last half pipe apiece.