Time passed on: the summer heats gradually gave way to the cooler temperature of autumn, and that too began to pass into winter, and nothing had been heard of Lavie or his guide. It had been calculated that it would take them fully two months to reach Cape Town; but there they would be able to obtain horses, which would so greatly shorten the return journey, that ten or eleven weeks might be regarded as the probable period of their entire absence. But March was exchanged for April, April for May; June succeeded May, and July, June; and still there came no tidings of the travellers. The boys grew anxious, and might have become seriously alarmed, if it had not been that they found so much to interest and employ them, that they had no time for indulging morbid fancies.
All the four whites occupied one large hut, some five and twenty feet in circumference, and provided with mats, karosses, and all the other furniture of a Kaffir dwelling-house, so as to render it a very comfortable residence. They also took all their meals together, which were provided at the cost of the whole tribe, and prepared for them by Kobo and Gaiké, the two attendants chosen for them by Chuma. But before many weeks had passed, they had separated, by common consent, into two pairs; De Walden and Ernest being almost continually together, and Frank and Nick Gilbert taking up with one another, as a matter of necessity.
Warley was deeply impressed by the character of the new friend he had found. De Walden’s devoted self-surrender, his resolute and uncomplaining spirit under the most trying hardships, his cheerfulness, and even joyousness, while enduring what would have broken most men’s spirits altogether, were the very ideal of which Ernest had dreamed, but never expected to realise.
“Did you make many converts among the Hottentots?” he asked one day. “I remember hearing you say your mission, as a whole, had not succeeded; but I suppose you made converts here and there?”
“I cannot say I ever made one.”
“Not one! And yet you were going back to them again!”
“Certainly. Why not?”
“Rather, ‘Why?’ I should have been inclined to ask.”
“Why? because God has commanded that the Gospel should be preached to all nations, and that command stands good, whether they will hear, or whether they forbear. It is our business to do His work, and His to look after the result.”
“And you would not consider that a man’s life was wasted, if he passed his whole life as a missionary, without making one convert?”