“If you mean Hernan Pereira,” I answered, “where did you meet him?”
“Why, down by the Tugela there, in a bad way. However, he can tell you all about that himself, for I have brought him with me to show us the path to Dingaan’s kraal. Where is Pereira? Send Pereira here. I want to speak with him.”
“Here I am,” answered a sleepy voice, the hated voice of Pereira himself, from the other side of a thick bush, where he had been slumbering. “What is it, commandant? I come,” and he emerged, stretching himself and yawning, just as the remainder of my party came up. He caught sight of Henri Marais first of all, and began to greet him, saying: “Thank God, my uncle, you are safe!”
Then his eyes fell on me, and I do not think I ever saw a man’s face change more completely. His jaw dropped, the colour left his cheeks, leaving them of the yellow which is common to persons of Portuguese descent; his outstretched hand fell to his side.
“Allan Quatermain!” he ejaculated. “Why, I thought that you were dead.”
“As I should have been, Mynheer Pereira, twice over if you could have had your way,” I replied.
“What do you mean, Allan?” broke in Retief.
“I will tell you what he means,” exclaimed the Vrouw Prinsloo, shaking her fat fist at Pereira. “That yellow dog means that twice he has tried to murder Allan—Allan, who saved his life and ours. Once he shot at him in a kloof and grazed his cheek; look, there is the scar of it. And once he plotted with the Zulus to slaughter him, telling Dingaan that he was an evildoer and a wizard, who would bring a curse upon his land.”
Now Retief looked at Pereira.
“What do you say to this?” he asked.