“How can you look at me?” she said at length. “I must be horrible; I have been living in the dark and crawling through mud. I trod upon a crocodile!” and she shuddered.
“Whatever you are I never want to see you different,” he answered slowly. “To me you are most beautiful.”
Even then, wreck as she was, the poor girl flushed, and there was a mist in her eyes as she looked up and said:
“Thank you. I don’t care now what happens to me, and what has happened doesn’t matter at all. But can we get away?”
“I don’t know,” he answered; “but I doubt it. Go and sit on the waggon-box for a few minutes while I dress, and we will see.”
Benita went. The mist was thinning now, and through it she saw a sight at which her heart sank, for between her and the mount Bambatse Matabele were pouring towards their camp on the river’s edge. They were cut off. A couple of minutes later Robert joined her, and as he came she looked at him anxiously in the growing light. He seemed older than when they had parted on the Zanzibar; changed, too, for now his face was serious, and he had grown a beard; also, he appeared to limp.
“I am afraid there is an end,” she said, pointing to the Matabele below.
“Yes, it looks like it. But like you, I say, what does it matter now?” and he took her hand in his, adding: “let us be happy while we can if only for a few minutes. They will be here presently.”
“What are you?” she asked. “A prisoner?”
“That’s it. I was following you when they captured me; for I have been here before and knew the way. They were going to kill me on general principles, only it occurred to one of them who was more intelligent than the rest that I, being a white man, might be able to show them how to storm the place. Now I was sure that you were there, for I saw you standing on that point, though they thought you were the Spirit of Bambatse. So I wasn’t anxious to help them, for then—you know what happens when the Matabele are the stormers! But—as you still lived—I wasn’t anxious to die either. So I set them to work to dig a hole with their assegais and sharp axes, through granite. They have completed exactly twenty feet of it, and I reckon that there are one hundred and forty to go. Last night they got tired of that tunnel and talked of killing me again, unless I could show them a better plan. Now all the fat is in the fire, and I don’t know what is to happen. Hullo! here they come. Hide in the waggon, quick!”