Hume looked curiously at the tall dark man.
“Who are you?” he asked, “and why have you followed us so closely?”
“Who am I? Ho, ho! I scarcely know. Ask the Zulus; they will tell you I am the great Witch-Doctor, whose coming and going no man knows. Ask the white traders—they will tell you I am the Hermit of the River. Ask the Portuguese—they will say I am Alfonse Ferrara, the lieutenant who killed his captain at Delagoa Bay. I am all these, and for twenty years I have lived on the banks of the river, alone—alone with the running water, the brooding trees, and the things that move in the night.”
“The animals?” whispered Hume, awed by the light which smouldered in the dark eyes opposite him.
“The animals—phaugh! they shrink at my coming. No, no, the soft, silent, gliding things that lurk in the shadows; that watch me looking over their shoulders, or peeping from the shelter of rocks, or from out the dark pool. I want to get away from them;” and he glared round the cavern, shuddering.
Hume shuddered too at the glimpse of madness in Ferrara’s gesture.
“But why did you dog us?”
“Because I knew what you were after, and I wanted it for myself. Years ago I knew of the secret of this valley. It was I who set your uncle upon the quest, in the hope I might afterwards rob him. I have haunted this place, but in vain, for they kept too close a watch. It was necessary to have help, and before you came, I sent a message to a Portuguese trader. You came when my plans were ready, and if it had not been that I mistrusted my countrymen, you would have been killed while you slept; but if they had played me false, I would have sought your help.”
“You appeared to us as a savage,” said Hume, repressing a feeling of abhorrence.
“Yes,” replied Ferrara with a mysterious air, and dropping his voice. “You see, I have donned this clothing to deceive them—the voiceless people who are searching for me. If they found me”—and he looked cautiously round—“they would drag me back to the river.”