Seeing it was useless to resist, Mr Ferguson with difficulty restrained Jack’s fierce British ebullition of defiance and rage, advising him to follow his example and quietly surrender themselves, as by that means they might win kindness instead of ill treatment from their assailants.
“And,” added the minister, when he had come to this part, bowing respectfully to Metilulu, “in that we were not deceived, for the tribe which you, most noble Chief, have just conquered, treated us most hospitably, and we have lived in peace among them up to this moment.”
I had noticed that, owing to fatigue, or perhaps joila, Metilulu had become exceedingly drowsy towards the end of the minister’s story. He roused up, however, at the close, and, catching the words respecting the tribe’s hospitality, said that they also should receive the same from his hands, as he liked white men much when they did not wish to be his enemies, but friends, like Galbratha, indicating me; then, growing silent, Metilulu partly averted his head. Taking this for a form of dismissal, we rose, made our obeisances, and, having asked his permission to retire, withdrew to a quiet secluded part of the kraal, where, wrapping our karosses around us, we laid ourselves down, first to have a chat, then to sleep.
I need not recount Mr Ferguson and Thompson’s history while in the Kaffir kraal, for it was much about the same as my own, only the minister had never ceased to fulfil his duties, working so untiringly, and with such success, that Jack—gruff and most British in his contempt of the natives—had often owed his safety to the missionary’s influence with them. Our lives differed also in the fact that Kabela, the chief of their tribe, had not desired them to take unto themselves wives, neither had a Kaffir girl done either of them the honour of falling in love with their white faces.
Poor Zenuta!
Chapter Twenty One.
Staying a Kaffir Execution—I Ask Metilulu’s Permission to Leave—The Boomslange—The Chief’s Answer.
As may be easily conceived, the talk of our past lives, and our delight at once more being in each other’s company, carried us far into the night before we would surrender ourselves to sleep; yet we were up nearly as early as any in the kraal the next morning, and gladly fell to upon some biltongue and amasi which had been found in the huts; then, hearing that Metilulu was inspecting his regiments, we thought it but politeness to be present. On arriving at the place, however, the review had nearly finished, the brave had been rewarded, and only the unworthy remained to be punished. Of the latter it happened that there was but one, and he had not been guilty of cowardice, but of a crime punishable by death in Caffraria.