“At the bottom of the basket were some curiously-shaped green leaves, rather like the leaves of the gutta-percha tree in shape, only somewhat thicker and of a more fleshy substance. As though by hazard, the girl picked one of these leaves out of the basket and smelt it. Then she handed it to me. I took the leaf, and supposing that she wished me to smell it also, was about to oblige her by doing so, when my eye fell upon some curious red scratches on the green surface of the leaf.
“‘Ah,’ said the girl (whose name, by the way, was Maiwa), speaking beneath her breath, ‘read the signs, white man.’
“Without answering her I continued to stare at the leaf. It had been scratched or rather written upon with a sharp tool, such as a nail, and wherever this instrument had touched it, the acid juice oozing through the outer skin had turned a rusty blood colour. Presently I found the beginning of the scrawl, and read this in English, and covering the surface of the leaf and of two others that were in the basket.
“‘I hear that a white man is hunting in the Matuku country. This is to warn him to fly over the mountain to Nala. Wambe sends an impi at daybreak to eat him up, because he has hunted before bringing hongo. For God’s sake, whoever you are, try to help me. I have been the slave of this devil Wambe for nearly seven years, and am beaten and tortured continually. He murdered all the rest of us, but kept me because I could work iron. Maiwa, his wife, takes this; she is flying to Nala her father because Wambe killed her child. Try to get Nala to attack Wambe; Maiwa can guide them over the mountain. You won’t come for nothing, for the stockade of Wambe’s private kraal is made of elephants’ tusks. For God’s sake, don’t desert me, or I shall kill myself. I can bear this no longer.
“‘John Every.’
“‘Great heavens!’ I gasped. ‘Every!—why, it must be my old friend.’ The girl, or rather the woman Maiwa, pointed to the other side of the leaf, where there was more writing. It ran thus—‘I have just heard that the white man is called Macumazahn. If so, it must be my friend Quatermain. Pray Heaven it is, for I know he won’t desert an old chum in such a fix as I am. It isn’t that I’m afraid of dying, I don’t care if I die, but I want to get a chance at Wambe first.’
“‘No, old boy,’ thought I to myself, ‘it isn’t likely that I am going to leave you there while there is a chance of getting you out. I have played fox before now—there’s still a double or two left in me. I must make a plan, that’s all. And then there’s that stockade of tusks. I am not going to leave that either.’ Then I spoke to the woman.
“‘You are called Maiwa?’
“‘It is so.’
“‘You are the daughter of Nala and the wife of Wambe?’