"I will promise to give you my answer at the end of twelve months. In the meantime, you will go back to England, live your own life, and on the first day of May next year, if you still love me, and are as anxious then to make your sacrifice as you are now, I will meet you again and be your wife as soon as you please. What do you say?"
For a few moments I could answer nothing; then, though I am not theatrically inclined as a general rule, I fell on my knee, and taking her hand kissed it, saying in a voice I hardly recognised as my own:
"My queen and my wife!"
"You are content to abide by that?"
"Since you wish it, I am more than content," I answered, my heart overflowing with happiness.
"Then let us say no more on the subject. Good-night! and may God bless you!"
She turned and left me without another word, and when I had seen her disappear into her hut, I too sought my couch, to dream, as I hoped, of the happiness that the future had in store for me.
CHAPTER VII.
But though I went to bed to sleep, and was sufficiently romantic to hope that I should dream of the future I was to spend with Alie, I was destined to be disappointed. My mind was in such a state of excitement that no sort of rest was possible to me. Hour after hour I tossed and tumbled upon my couch, now hovering on the borderland of sleep, now wide awake, listening to the murmur of the stream beyond the camp, and the thousand and one noises of the night. When at last I did doze off, my dreams were not pleasant, and I awoke from them quite unrefreshed. Springing out of bed I went to the door to look out. It was broad daylight, and the sun was in the act of rising. To go back to bed was impossible, so, as breakfast was still some hours ahead, I dressed myself, took a rifle from the stand, and slipping a dozen or so cartridges into the pocket of my shooting coat, procured a few biscuits from the dining-hut, and strolled across the open space into the forest beyond. It was a glorious morning for a hunting excursion, and before I had gone half a mile I had secured a fine deer for the camp's commissariat. Fixing the spot where I had left it, and feeling certain some of the natives would soon be on my trail after hearing the report, I plunged further into the jungle, capturing here and there a beetle, a butterfly, or a bird, as they chanced to fall in my way.