Chapter Eighteen.
“We are going wrong.”
“No, gen’lemen,” said Buck, in reply to a question; “I have had four long trips with hunting parties, and know a good deal of the country, but this is all new to me. Mak professes to know, and I daresay he is all right. He is clever enough at choosing good open country where my bullocks can get along, and he never stops at a kopje without our finding water. You see, we have got now during this last week to the edge of the biggest piece of forest that we have had to do with, and I am not going to interfere with him till he shows that he’s a bit lost. Here we are keeping to the edge of the trees where I can get the waggons along and you can have plenty of sport, which gives us all enough to eat. Oh, it’s all right, gen’lemen. These niggers know what they are about. I’d trust him, and I suppose it don’t matter to you where we are, because we can always turn back when you are tired and your stores begin to run out.”
“But Dr Robertson wants to find the ancient cities that we have heard of. Where are they?” said Mark.
“I d’know, sir,” said the man, with a laugh. “There’s Mak yonder; let’s go and ask him.”
Instead of going to the black, Buck Denham signed to him as he looked their way, and the stalwart, fierce-looking fellow marched up to them, shouldering his spear, whose broken shaft he had replaced with a finely grown bamboo.
The questioning resulted in a certain amount of pantomime on Mak’s part and a confident display of smiles.
“Oh, it’s all right, gen’lemen; he knows. He says we are to keep right along just outside the trees, and that he will take us to what he calls the big stones. But they are days and days farther on.”