ose cunning beasts who refused to come
out into the open and face their assagais. Grosvenor announced his
intention of accompanying Dick, and five minutes later the pair, with
their sable guide leading the way and carrying the medicine chest, were
_en route_ for the village, Dick carrying his case of surgical
instruments under his arm. Their rifles they left with the wagon,
deeming it unnecessary to cumber themselves with superfluous weapons in
face of the fact that the villagers were obviously quite friendly
disposed to white men, indeed they were still too close to civilisation
to anticipate anything else.

As they neared the village the "boy" who preceded them began to shout
the great news that the white men were coming to make whole the injured
man, and the occupants of the huts, to the number of about two hundred
men, women, and children, swarmed out to gaze upon the strangers. The
guide, who was inclined to put on airs, upon the strength of being the
bearer of the white men's _muti_, would fain have made the most of the
occasion by pausing in the centre of the village and haranguing his
fellows, but Dick nipped the intention ruthlessly in the bud by
repeating several times, in an imperative tone of voice, the word
_hamba_ (go), and presently the procession--for every occupant of the
village formed up and followed the trio--came to a halt in front of one
of the huts.

As the bearer of the medicine chest pushed his burden in through the
low, narrow entrance of the hut, and dropped on hands and knees in order
to follow it, Dick turned and, perceiving a disposition on the part of
the crowd to gather close about the entrance, and so exclude what little
light and air might otherwise make its way in, took an assagai from the
hand of an astonished native, and, holding it by the blade, waved the
press back with the butt end of the weapon. Then, still waving the butt
end, he described on the ground the arc of a circle of some twelve feet
radius from the hut entrance, and, returning the weapon to its owner,
pointed to the mark on the ground, and, addressing the curiosity-ridden
mob, said impressively in English:

"Now, good people, please have the goodness to keep carefully outside
that line, and oblige yours truly!"

There was not one of those odoriferous, dark-skinned Kafirs who
comprehended a word of English, but Dick's actions and the tones of his
voice were so expressive that his meaning was almost as distinctly