We had a very pleasant dinner that night, although I was so ashamed of my clothes with smart uniforms and white ties all about me, and Anscombe kept fidgeting his feet because he was suffering agony from his new pumps which were a size too small. Everybody was in the best of spirits, for from all directions came the news that the Annexation was well received and that the danger of any trouble had passed away. Ah! if we had only known what the end of it would be!
It was on our way back to the wagon that I chanced to mention to Anscombe that there was still a herd of buffalo within a few days’ trek of Lydenburg, of which I had shot two not a month before.
“Are there, by Jove!” he said. “As it happens I never got a buffalo; always I just missed them in one sense or another, and I can’t leave Africa with a pair of bought horns. Let’s go there and shoot some.”
I shook my head and replied that I had been idling long enough and must try to make some money, news at which he seemed very disappointed.
“Look here,” he said, “forgive me for mentioning it, but business is business. If you’ll come you shan’t be a loser.”
Again I shook my head, whereat he looked more disappointed than before.
“Very well,” he exclaimed, “then I must go alone. For kill a buffalo I will; that is unless the buffalo kills me, in which case my blood will be on your hands.”
I don’t know why, but at that moment there came into my mind a conviction that if he did go alone a buffalo or something would kill him and that then I should be sorry all my life.
“They are dangerous brutes, much worse than lions,” I said.
“And yet you, who pretend to have a conscience, would expose me to their rage unprotected and alone,” he replied with a twinkle in his eye which I could see even by moonlight. “Oh! Quatermain, how I have been mistaken in your character.”