“Yes, the guide,” said Mark hastily. “That’s why we have come up this morning.”
“Well, you couldn’t have come at a better time,” said the officer. “He has been far away, for some reason best known to himself, but he marched into camp last evening, looking as if he were monarch of all he surveyed.”
“Then that’s the man we saw!” cried Dean excitedly.
“Tall, black, fine-looking fellow, well built, and a savage chief every inch of him?”
“Yes,” said Mark eagerly; “and hardly any clothes.”
“That’s the man. There, I will send one of my men to fetch him here;” and stepping to the window he called to the sentry on duty to pass the word for someone to hunt out Mak and bring him there.
“Mak!” said the doctor, laughing. “What, have you got Scotch blacks here?”
“Oh, no. We call him Mak because he is like one of the Makalaka. Properly he belongs to a great tribe called the Ulakas, who used at one time to occupy the kopjes about here. I suppose that is why this place has come to be known as Illakaree.”
Only a few minutes later the tall, stately-looking black of the preceding evening was seen crossing the barrack enclosure, carrying his spear over his shoulder and looking down with a sort of contempt at the young bugler by his side, to which the boy retorted by looking up as contemptuously at the stalwart black, thinking of him as a naked nigger.
“Now I don’t wish to interfere,” said the captain. “I only want to be of service to you gentlemen out in this wild place, if I can. It is no presumption to say, I suppose, that you can’t understand the Illaka dialect?”