To ask was one thing, but to get an answer, another. The Kaffir ladies were rather alarmed, and plainly regarded the small black box Norah held as a very bad kind of magic. They caught up their babies, and jabbered together, while Norah stood, half-laughing, making no attempt to photograph them without their permission. Help came in the person of a brisk rickshaw “boy,” who took in the situation at a glance, and explained to the anxious mothers that the white young lady merely wished to pay them and their children a high compliment in making a picture of them—whereupon the mothers subsided immediately, and held up the fat, brown scraps of humanity, who struggled wildly, like babies all the world over before a camera, while their anxious parents addressed to them the Kaffir equivalent of “Look pleasant, please.” The rickshaw “boy” stood by, beaming like a full moon, and uttering words of encouragement. Afterwards the travellers engaged him and his rickshaw—a contingency which he had probably foreseen; and they jogged lazily back to Durban, arriving at the hotel towards evening. Two tall figures, rather sheepish and pale-faced, rose from verandah lounges and came to meet them.
“You bad boys!” Norah exclaimed.
“Do you think you two should be out of bed?” Mr. Linton asked.
“Rather!” Jim answered firmly. “We stayed there until they brought us tea—but they didn’t bring half enough food, so we got up and went to find more. We’re all right.”
“It sounds as though you were!” Norah said, laughing. “How are the bruises?”
“Oh—a bit stiff. Exercise is the best thing for them.” The subject was evidently sorer than the bruises, and Jim changed it, demanding an account of their day.
“I’ve a letter from the captain,” Mr. Linton announced, when they all met at breakfast next morning. “The ship is leaving earlier than we thought—we have to be on board at noon.”
“Bother!” said his hearers, as one man.
“It’s a bore, but there are compensations. The warship we saw at the Point is going ahead of us to Cape Town—and that means no war precautions for a few days.”
“Open port-holes!” said Norah, blissfully. “Deck lights—no more stuffy saloon! Lights in one’s cabin——!”