r, the Predikant,
after all."

"Why not?" I asked, though the fact was fairly obvious.

"Because, Baas, if he were, he would not have left Hans, of whom he
always thought so well, to run in the sun like a dog, while he and
others travel in carriages like great white ladies."

"You had better save your breath instead of talking nonsense, Hans," I
said, "since I believe that you have a long way to go."

In fact, it proved to be a very long way indeed, especially as after we
began to breast the mountain, we must travel slowly. We started about
ten o'clock in the morning, for the fight which after all did not take
long--had, it will be remembered, begun shortly after dawn, and it was
three in the afternoon before we reached the base of the towering cliff
which I have mentioned.

Here, at the foot of a remarkable, isolated column of rock, on which I
was destined to see a strange sight in the after days, we halted and ate
of the remaining food which we had brought with us, while the Amahagger
consumed their own, that seemed to consist largely of curdled milk, such
as the Zulus call _maas_, and lumps of a kind of bread.

I noted that they were a very curious people who fed in silence and on
whose handsome, solemn faces one never saw a smile. Somehow it gave me
the creeps to look at them. Robertson was affected in the same way, for
in one of the rare intervals of his abstraction he remarked that they
were "no canny." Then he added,

"Ask yon old wizard who might be one of the Bible prophets come to
life--what those man-eating devils have done with my daughter."

I did so, and Billali answered,

"Say that they have taken her away to make a queen of her, since having
rebelled against their own queen, they must have another who is white.
Say too that She-who-commands will wage war on them and perhaps win her
back, unless they kill her first."

"Ah!" Robertson repeated when I had translated, "unless they kill her
first--or worse." Then he relapsed into his usual silence.

Presently we started on again, heading straight for what looked like a
sheer wall of black rock a thousand feet or more in height, up a path so
steep that Robertson and I got out and walked, or rather scrambled, in
order to ease the bearers. Billali, I noticed, remained in his litter.
The convenience of the bearers did not trouble him; he only ordered an
extra gang to the poles. I could not imagine how we were to negotiate
this precipice. Nor could Um