ome four days' march from hence, having a
house there which he built many years ago."

"How is the white man named?" asked Leonard.

"The black people call him Mavoom, but his white name is Rodd. He is a
good master and no common man, but he has this fault, that at times he
is drunken. Twenty years ago or more Mavoom, my lord, married a white
woman, a Portuguese whose father dwelt at Delagoa Bay, and who was
beautiful, ah! beautiful. Then he settled on the banks of the Zambesi
and became a trader, building the house where he is now, or rather where
its ruins are. Here his wife died in childbirth; yes, she died in my
arms, and it was I who reared her daughter Juanna, tending her from the
cradle to this day.

"Now, after the death of his wife Mavoom became more drunken. Still,
when he is not in liquor he is very clever and a good trader, and
several times he has collected ivory and feathers and gold worth much
money, and also has bred cattle by hundreds. Then he would say that he
must leave the wilderness and go to another country across the water, I
know not where, that country whence the Englishmen come.

"Twice he has started to go, and I with him and his daughter Juanna, my
mistress, who is named the Shepherdess of Heaven by the black people,
because they think that she has the gift of foretelling rain. But once
Mavoom stopped in a town, at Durban in Natal, and getting drunk he
gambled away all his money in a month, and once he lost it in a river,
the boat being overset by a river-horse and the ivory and gold sinking
out of sight. Still, the last time that he started he left his daughter,
the Shepherdess, at Durban, and there she stayed for three years
learning those things that the white women know, for she is very clever,
as clever as she is beautiful and good. Now, for nearly two years she
has been back at the Settlement, for she came to Delagoa Bay in a ship,
and I with her, and Mavoom met us.

"But one month gone my mistress the Shepherdess spoke to her father
Mavoom, telling him that she wearied of their lonely life in the
wilderness and wished to sail across the waters to the land which is
called Home. He listened to her, for Mavoom loves his daughter, and said
that it should be so. But he said this also: that first he would go on
a trading journey up the river to buy a store of ivory of which he knew.
Now she was against this, saying, 'Let us start at once, we have tempted
chance too long, and once again