I listened, and caught the sound of a horse’s hoofs stumbling among the rocks.
“Don’t be frightened,” I answered; “it is only Hans with my horse. He escaped also; I will tell you how afterwards.” And as I spoke he appeared, a woebegone and exhausted object.
“Good day, missie,” he said with an attempt at cheerfulness. “Now you should give me a fine dinner, for you see I have brought the baas back safe to you. Did I not tell you, baas, that everything would come right?”
Then he grew silent from exhaustion. Nor were we sorry, who at that moment did not wish to listen to the poor fellow’s talk.
Something over two hours had gone by since the moon broke out from the clouds. I had greeted the Vrouw Prinsloo and all my other friends, and been received by them with rapture as one risen from the dead. If they had loved me before, now a new gratitude was added to their love, since had it not been for my warning they also must have made acquaintance with the Zulu spears and perished. It was on their part of the camp that the worst of the attack fell. Indeed, from those wagons hardly anyone escaped.
I had told them all the story, to which they listened in dead silence. Only when it was finished the Heer Meyer, whose natural gloom had been deepened by all these events, said:
“Allemachte! but you have luck, Allan, to be left when everyone else is taken. Now, did I not know you so well, like Hernan Pereira I should think that you and that devil Dingaan had winked at each other.”
The Vrouw Prinsloo turned on him furiously.
“How dare you say such words, Carl Meyer?” she exclaimed. “Must Allan always be insulted just because he is English, which he cannot help? For my part, I think that if anyone winked at Dingaan it was the stinkcat Pereira. Otherwise why did he come away before the killing and bring that madman, Henri Marais, with him?”
“I don’t know, I am sure, aunt,” said Meyer humbly, for like everyone else he was afraid of the Vrouw Prinsloo.