These walked last in case any of the mixed-bloods should attempt
to desert, as we thought it quite probable that they would.

Less than an hour's tramp brought us to the bush-veld where I feared
that our troubles might begin, since if the Amahagger were cunning,
they would take advantage of it to confuse or hide their spoor. As it
chanced, however, they had done nothing of the sort and a child could
have followed their march. Just before nightfall we came to their first
halting-place where they had made a fire and eaten one of the herd of
farm goats which they had driven away with them, although they left the
cattle, I suppose, because goats are docile and travel well.

Hans showed us everything that had happened; where the chair in which
Inez was carried was set down, where she and Janee had been allowed to
walk that she might stretch her stiff limbs, the dregs of some coffee
that evidently Janee had made in a saucepan, and so forth.

He even told us the exact number of the Amahagger, which he said
totalled forty-one, including the man whom Inez had wounded. His spoor
he distinguished from that of the others both by an occasional drop of
blood and because he walked lightly on his right foot, doubtless for
the reason that he wished to avoid jarring his wound, which was on that
side.

At this spot we were obliged to stay till daybreak, since it was
impossible to follow the spoor by night, a circumstance that gave the
cannibals a great advantage over us.

The next two days were repetitions of the first, but on the fourth we
passed out of the bush-veld into the swamp country that bordered the
great river. Here our task was still easy since the Amahagger had
followed one of the paths made by the river-dwellers who had their
habitations on mounds, though whether these were natural or artificial I
am not sure, and sometimes on floating islands.

On our second day in the reeds we came upon a sad sight. To our left
stood one of these mound villages, if a village it could be called,
since it consisted only of four or five huts inhabited perhaps by twenty
people. We went up to it to obtain information and stumbled across the
body of an old man lying in the pathway. A few yards further on we
found the ashes of a big fire and by it such remains as we had seen at
Strathmuir. Here there had been another cannibal feast. The miserable
huts were empty, but as at Strathmuir, had not been burnt.

We were going away when the acute e