'I don't know what you mean,' I said, with an air of cheerful idiocy. 'But back to the Berg I go the first thing in the morning. I hate these stinking plains.'
'It were wise to go to-night,' he said, with a touch of menace in his tone.
'I can't,' I said, and began to sing the chorus of a ridiculous music-hall song—
'There's no place like home—but
I'm afraid to go home in the dark.'
Laputa shrugged his shoulders, stepped over the bristling Colin, and went out. When I looked after him two minutes later he had disappeared.
[1] The circlet into which, with the aid of gum, Zulu warriors weave their hair.
CHAPTER IX
THE STORE AT UMVELOS'
I sat down on a chair and laboured to collect my thoughts. Laputa had gone, and would return sooner or later with Henriques. If I was to remain alive till morning, both of them must be convinced that I was harmless. Laputa was probably of that opinion, but Henriques would recognize me, and I had no wish to have that yellow miscreant investigating my character. There was only one way out of it—I must be incapably drunk. There was not a drop of liquor in the store, but I found an old whisky bottle half full of methylated spirits. With this I thought I might raise an atmosphere of bad whisky, and for the rest I must trust to my meagre gifts as an actor.