United States or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was the Namaqua administering him a pill some nauseous native decoction, no doubt which tasted as if it were made of stiff white paper. For a day or two more, Granville remained seriously ill in the dirty hut. At the end of that time, weak and wasted as he was, he insisted upon getting up and setting out alone on his long march seaward. It was a wild resolve. He was utterly unfit for it.
"Why, so I did," Guy answered, still thoroughly out of breath, and stained with blood and powder. "I tore a leaf from my note-book and gave it to the Namaqua, explaining to him by signs that he was to let you have it at once, the moment you were conscious.
Talk about coals of fire! Granville Kelmscott hardly knew how to forgive himself for his unworthy distrust. Then Guy must have reached the coast in safety, after leaving him in charge of the Namaqua and fighting his way through, and now he was on his way back to the interior again, with a sufficient escort and a palanquin to fetch him.
At the very same moment the Namaqua leapt to his feet in sudden alarm, and, shading his eyes with his dusky hand, gazed intently in front of him. For a minute or so he stood still, with brows knit and neck craning. Then he called out something in an excited tone two or three times over in his own tongue to Granville.
He would follow the villain till he ran him to earth, and would tax him at last to his face with the open proofs of his consummate treachery. What's bred in the bone will out in the blood. The Kelmscott strain worked alike its own way in each of them. The Namaqua, to be sure, tried in vain to explain to Granville by elaborate signs that the other white man had given orders to the contrary.
How Granville got over that terrible journey seaward he could never tell. He crawled on and on, supported by the faithful Namaqua with unfailing good-humour, over that endless veldt, for three long days of wretched footsore marching. And for three long nights he slept, or lay awake, under the clear desert stars, on the open ground of barren Namaqua land. It was a terrible time.
I once went to visit a Namaqua chief, who had been severely wounded by a lion of this description a man-eater, as the Major terms them, and he gave me the following dreadful narrative, which certainly corroborates what they assert of the lion who had once taken a fancy to human flesh.
They must wait and camp there. For what they were to wait, Granville hadn't the faintest conception. But the Namaqua insisted upon it, and Granville was helpless as a child in his hands. The man was alarmed, apparently, for his promised reward. If Granville insisted, he showed in very frank dumb show, why a thrust with the assegai explained the rest most persuasively.
Impossible as he found it in his own mind to reconcile those strange words with all that Guy had said to him in the wilds of Namaqua land, he couldn't look him in the face without seeing at a glance how profound and unexpected was this sudden surprise to him. He was right in saying, "I'm as innocent of this charge as you or Granville Kelmscott."
"Westward?" Granville answered, very dubiously. "But why westward, Waring? Surely our shortest way to the coast is down to Kimberley and so on to the Cape. It'll take us weeks and weeks to reach the sea, won't it, by way of Namaqua land?" "No matter for that," Guy replied, with confidence. He knew the map pretty well, and had thought it all over.
Word Of The Day