se and
walking a few paces forward, stood staring at the cleft in the mountain
cliff into which he had seen the litter vanish that bore his daughter to
some fate unknown.

Even the great fight that we had fought and the victory we had won
against overpowering odds did not appear to impress him. He only glared
at the mountain into the heart of which Inez had been raped away, and
shook his fist. Since she was gone all else went for nothing, so much so
that he did not offer to assist with the wounded Zulus or show curiosity
about the strange old man by whom we had been rescued.

"The Great Medicine, Baas," said Hans in a bewildered way, "is even more
powerful than I thought. Not only has it brought us safely through the
fighting and without a scratch, for those Zulus there do not matter and
there will be less cooking for me to do now that they are gone; it has
also brought down your reverend father the Predikant from the Place of
Fires in Heaven, somewhat changed from what I remember him, it is
true, but still without doubt the same. When I make my report to him
presently, if he can understand my talk, I shall----"

"Stop your infernal nonsense, you son of a donkey," I broke in, for at
this moment old Father Christmas, smiling more benignly than before,
re-appeared from the kloof into which he had vanished and advanced
towards us bowing with much politeness.

Having seated himself upon the little wall that we had built up,
he contemplated us, stroking his beautiful white beard, then said,
addressing me,

"Of a certainty you should be proud who with a few have defeated so
many. Still, had I not been ordered to come at speed, I think that by
now you would have been as those are," and he looked towards the dead
Zulus who were laid out at a distance like men asleep, while their
companions sought for a place to bury them.

"Ordered by whom?" I asked.

"There is only one who can order," he answered with mild astonishment.
"'She-who-commands, She-who-is-everlasting'!"

It occurred to me that this must be some Arabic idiom for the Eternal
Feminine, but I only looked vague and said,

"It would appear that there are some whom this exalted everlasting She
cannot command; those who attacked us; also those who have fled away
yonder," and I waved my hand towards the mountain.

"No command is absolute; in every country there are rebels, even, as I
have heard, in Heaven above us. But, Wanderer, what is your name?"

"Watcher-