to
planning what I should take with me. What comforts could she send
Gerald in the comfortless desert without overloading me? I showed
Johannes' note to Drayton after dinner. He whistled, and, to his
credit, looked grave.

'I'm to go after him to-morrow,' I said. 'I've thought over it,
and I think you may as well come too. You may be useful, as
knowing his ways.'

He nodded. 'Rather bad about his running out of skoff, isn't it?'
he asked. 'I wonder if he's out of baccy and just breaking his
heart.' His plump face was pitiful.

'Don't you fret,' I answered. 'It only means he's run out of our
food. They'll surely buy monkey-nuts or sweet-potatoes or rice in
the kraals. He's probably developed a passion for native food by
now, also for native snuff. He'll be able to buy some of that,
surely.'

'Just so,' said Drayton. He began to quote again in a sort of
droning chant as if he were a chorus recording the onsweep of a
tragedy:

'I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she lean, and sing A faery's song.

'She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said I love thee true.'

In the morning we got a flying start after all, though Drayton
was in bed when I came back from church. We went away at eight,
and soon found, to our joy, that we were really well mounted. It
was joy, too, to remember what a stubborn mule Browne had for
pacing steed. He had not got away far, we assured ourselves. But
we did not catch him that night.

We asked at kraals as we went along, and struck a hot scent about
three in the afternoon. A white man had passed that morning a
white man riding a dappled mule, with a boy carrying blankets
behind him. Straightway we gave our ponies an off-saddle.

Afterwards we rode on hard in what we deemed to be the right
direction till darkness fell: We sought shelter at a village
then. There was no village gossip, alas! about the passing of a
white man that day! They were good to us, though, those
villagers, and gave us beans and monkey-nuts for supper and
mealies for our ponies. After we had finished eating we spread
out the rush-mat they had lent us and lay down to smoke and
meditate and surmise as to our passionate pilgrim. They had given
us a hut that was old and grimy with fires. Its floor teemed with
life.

Therefore we changed our resting-place and went out to camp under
a rocky eminence. There with