she must
have taken this second route, and wandered out like Hagar into the
wilderness. If she did so, there is no longer anything inexplicable
about the story, since, as Ignosi himself related, she may well have
been picked up by some ostrich hunters before she or the child was
exhausted, was led by them to the oasis, and thence by stages to the
fertile country, and so on by slow degrees southwards to Zululand.--A.Q.

CHAPTER XX

FOUND

And now I come to perhaps the strangest adventure that happened to us
in all this strange business, and one which shows how wonderfully
things are brought about.

I was walking along quietly, some way in front of the other two, down
the banks of the stream which runs from the oasis till it is swallowed
up in the hungry desert sands, when suddenly I stopped and rubbed my
eyes, as well I might. There, not twenty yards in front of me, placed
in a charming situation, under the shade of a species of fig-tree, and
facing to the stream, was a cosy hut, built more or less on the Kafir
principle with grass and withes, but having a full-length door instead
of a bee-hole.

"What the dickens," said I to myself, "can a hut be doing here?" Even
as I said it the door of the hut opened, and there limped out of it a
_white man_ clothed in skins, and with an enormous black beard. I
thought that I must have got a touch of the sun. It was impossible. No
hunter ever came to such a place as this. Certainly no hunter would
ever settle in it. I stared and stared, and so did the other man, and
just at that juncture Sir Henry and Good walked up.

"Look here, you fellows," I said, "is that a white man, or am I mad?"

Sir Henry looked, and Good looked, and then all of a sudden the lame
white man with a black beard uttered a great cry, and began hobbling
towards us. When he was close he fell down in a sort of faint.

With a spring Sir Henry was by his side.

"Great Powers!" he cried, "_it is my brother George!_"

At the sound of this disturbance, another figure, also clad in skins,
emerged from the hut, a gun in his hand, and ran towards us. On seeing
me he too gave a cry.

"Macumazahn," he halloed, "don't you know me, Baas? I'm Jim the hunter.
I lost the note you gave me to give to the Baas, and we have been here
nearly two years." And the fellow fell at my feet, and rolled over and
over, weeping for joy.

"You careless scoundrel!" I said; "you ought to be well
_sjambocked_"--that is, hided.