“Hyhaena, my lad—hyhaena.”
“Yes, that’s it. Well, it made noise enough for t’other, didn’t it?”
“Made noise enough for t’other!” growled the driver. “You wait till you hear the real thing, and you won’t ask questions again like that.”
Dance took his pipe out of his mouth and opened his eyes, for he too had grown drowsy in the warmth of the fire, after his long day’s tramp.
“I ’eerd it too, and thought it must be a big howl a-howling. You have got howls out here, haven’t you, mate?”
“Oh, yes; plenty. But that’s what I said.”
The big driver having noted that the men had brought up a plentiful supply of wood sufficient to keep up the beast-scaring beacon, subsided heavily in the full light of the fire and began to fill his pipe.
“Now you two,” he said to the Hottentot and the foreloper, “just take a quiet walk round the bullocks, and then you can come back and smoke your pipe of peace.”
The Hottentot’s voice sounded very unpleasant and very clicky as he replied sharply, and though it was almost unintelligible Mark made out from it and the driver’s answers that Dunn Brown was already performing that duty.
“Oh,” said Buck, “then you needn’t go. That will be all right. Well, Illaka, aren’t you coming to sit down?” For the boys suddenly noticed the black shadowy figure of the guide glide into the firelight, his appearance being emphasised by a flash where the flame played upon the polished leaf-shaped blade of his spear.