“I don’t know how it was done,” he said, with a deprecatory laugh. “Your daughter evidently has very artistic instincts, Thornhill. I can’t say I have, but I’ve been a bit among people who cut in for that sort of thing, and may have absorbed some of their jargon. I suppose that is what interested her.”
“Heard any more about that suspicious stranger I came over to tell you about the other day?” said Thornhill, characteristically changing the subject without any sort of prelude.
“Yes, I have. As you supposed, he’s a Zulu from beyond the river, one of Mehlo-ka-zulu’s chief men. He’s got no business at all in these locations, but you know as well as I do that it’s sometimes sound policy to shut one eye. To interfere with him just now would do more harm than good; the tax-collecting time is coming on, and the people want smoothing down, not brushing up.”
“That’s so,” said the other, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. “Oh he belongs to Mehlo-ka-zulu does he? M’yes. Mehlo-ka-zulu’s a fine fellow but a bit of a firebrand. If anything went wrong here it wouldn’t be long before he had a finger in the pie. At least—so I predict.”
Thus they talked on, airing official matters even as Edala had declared they would. Elvesdon for his part rejoiced at finding a man such as this, right at his very door, so to say; from the well of whose shrewdness and experience he could draw at will. Then they went round to the stables, and soon the slant of the sunbeams told that the heat of the day was passed.
“Well, are we ready for Sipazi? The sun is going off the valley, and we shall have it splendidly cool.”
They turned. Edala was looking fresh, and even, for her, rosy, after her nap. Elvesdon almost started. This dash of colour was all that was needed to render the face absolutely a lovely one.
“Look, Mr Elvesdon,” she went on. “Now is the time when the sun gets on the big krantz, and makes it gleam like fire. Look.”
He did look. The majestic mountain towered up from the sombre moist depths of the now shaded valley below, its slopes striped with tongues of dark bush, shooting up to where they culminated in a sheer wall of cliff, smooth, absolutely perpendicular where not overhanging. Upon this now, the slanting rays of the westering sun were striking at an angle, and the whole face of the gigantic rock wall, scarcely less than three hundred feet sheer, was glowing and sparkling as though it had suddenly burst into flame.
“Wo! Sipazi-pazi!” exclaimed Edala, shading her eyes, in laughing imitation of the natives. “Now, haven’t we got something to be proud of, Mr Elvesdon? Fancy owning such a fragment of the globe as that—you see, I can’t help bragging about it. Now come along and let’s get to the top. Here are the horses.”