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'What makes Laputa come up here to start with? Why doesn't he begin with Zululand? 'God knows! There's sure to be sense in it, for he does nothing without reason. We may know to-morrow. But as Captain Arcoll spoke, the real reason suddenly flashed into my mind: Laputa had to get the Great Snake, the necklet of Prester John, to give his leadership prestige.

Think well before you defy the mandate of the Snake, and risk the vengeance of the Terrible Ones. After that I knew that we had won. The chiefs talked among themselves in low whispers, casting strange looks at me. Then the greatest of them advanced and laid his rifle at my feet. 'We believe the word of a brave man, he said. 'We accept the mandate of the Snake. Arcoll now took command.

My only chance was that Arcoll might have been busy this day, and the countryside too full of his men to let Laputa's Kaffirs through. But if this was so, Laputa and I should be stopped, and then Laputa would certainly kill me. I wished and yet I did not wish that Arcoll should hold all approaches. As I reflected, my first exhilaration died away. The scales were still heavily weighted against me.

They saw nobody; from which Arcoll could deduce that his man had gone down the Berg into the forests. Had the Basutos been any good at woodcraft we should have had better intelligence. But living in a bare mountain country they are apt to find themselves puzzled in a forest.

From there to the eastern extremity of the Rooirand, which is the Portuguese frontier, the country is open and rolling, with a thin light scrub in the hollows. It was bad cover for the fugitives, as they found to their cost. For Arcoll had purposely turned his police into a flying column. They no longer held a line; they scoured a country.

But till Inanda's Kraal my life was safe, and before that came the ford of the Letaba. Colin would carry my message to Arcoll, and at the Drift the tables would be turned on Laputa's men. Looking back in cold blood, it seems the craziest chain of accidents to count on for preservation. A dozen possibilities might have shattered any link of it.

'The man found the chief Makapan. He was very much alive, and made good shooting with a shot-gun. But the man brought the chief Makapan out of his kraal and handed him over to the Mounted Police. You remember Captain Arcoll, Dick Jim Arcoll? Well, Jim laughed so much that he broke open a wound in his head, and had to have a doctor. 'You were that man, Peter, I said. 'Ja. I was the man.

If he had tried the Berg by one of the faces he might have got on to the plateau and been at Inanda's Kraal by the dawning. But he over-estimated the size of the commandoes, and held on to the north, where he thought there would be no defence. About one o'clock Arcoll, tired of inaction and conscious that he had misread Laputa's tactics, resolved on a bold stroke.

Besides, I've an old quarrel with our friend Laputa. 'Good and well, said Captain Arcoll. 'Draw in your chair to the table, then, and I'll explain to you the disposition of my men. I should tell you that I have loyal natives in my pay in most tribes, and can count on early intelligence.

It had gone out of existence, and with it the chance of a Kaffir empire. Captain Arcoll got up to light his pipe, and I noticed that his face was grave. He was not telling us this yarn for our amusement. 'So much for Prester John and his charm, he said. 'Now I have to take up the history at a different point.