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More likely he was only a runaway slave, taking advantage, like themselves, of King Khatsua's absence. Three weeks later, two torn and tattered, half-starved Europeans sat under a burning South African sun by the dry bed of a shrunken summer torrent.
He started alone, as a Kelmscott might do, and made his way adventurously, without any knowledge of the Koranna language or manners, through many wild villages of King Khatsua's dominions. Night after night he camped out in the open; and day after day he tramped on by himself, buying food as he went from the natives for English silver, in search of precious stones, over that dreary tableland.
He handed over the stone with a pang of regret. The savage grinned to himself, and scanned it attentively. Then extending his spear, as one might do to a cow or a sheep, he drove Granville before him. "You come along a' me," he said shortly, in a most determined voice. "You come along a' me. King Khatsua's orders."
As Granville entered, the husband and father, poking in his head, shouted a few words after him. Another native outside kept watch and ward with a spear at the door meanwhile, to prevent his escape against King Khatsua's orders. For two long hours the Englishman waited there, fretting and fuming, in that stifling atmosphere.
As they lived and worked together in their native hut by Khatsua's village, a change began slowly but irresistibly to come over Granville Kelmscott's feelings towards his unacknowledged half-brother. At first, it was with the deepest sense of distaste and loathing that the dispossessed heir found himself compelled to associate with Guy Waring in such close companionship.
"Dis land King Khatsua's," he repeated once more, in an angry voice. "All diamonds found on it belong to King Khatsua. Just you hand dat over. No steal; no tief-ee." The instincts of the land-owning class were too strong in Granville Kelmscott not to make him admit at once to himself the justice of this claim. The owner of the soil had a right to the diamonds.
So eighteen months wore away, in mutual friendship, tempered to a certain degree by mutual contempt, and little chance of escape came to the captives in Barolong land. At last, as the second winter came round once more, for two or three weeks the Englishmen in their huts began to perceive that much bustle and confusion was going on all around in King Khatsua's dominions.
Of course they lived perforce in the Koranna hut assigned them by the king, in pretty much the same way as the Korannas themselves did. King Khatsua's men supplied them abundantly with grain, and fruits, and game; and even at times procured them ready-made clothes, by exchange with Kimberley. In other respects, they were not ill-treated; they were merely detained "during his majesty's pleasure."
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