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As soon as I heard the voice I knew the speaker. "Oh, Mynheer Marais!" I cried, "I am no ghost, I am Allan himself come to save you." Marais made no answer; he seemed bewildered. But one of the men cried out crazily: "How can you save us, youngster, unless you are ready to be eaten? Don't you see, we starve, we starve!" "I have wagons and food," I answered. "Allemachte!
"A tale has been brought to me that I am not to be taken to the big camp to have my case inquired of by the council, but am to be shot down in cold blood when I come out of this house to-morrow morning. Is that true?" "Allemachte, Englishman!" answered one of them. "Do you take us for murderers?
On hearing this news we debated whether it would not be well for us to follow their example and, trekking westwards, try to find a pass in the mountains. Upon this point there was a division of opinion among us. Marais, who was a fatalist, wished to go on, saying that the good Lord would protect us, as He had done in the past. "Allemachte!" answered the Vrouw Prinsloo.
Who would have thought that we who parted so far away and so long ago would live to meet among the Zulus?" He stared at me. "Who is it? Who is it? Allemachte! I know now. The little Englishman, Allan Quatermain, who shot the geese down in the Old Colony. Well, I should not be surprised, for the man you beat in that match told me that you were travelling in these parts.
There he sat upon the ground, looking upwards, gasping with his fish-like mouth. Each gasp, I remember, fashioned itself into the word "Allemachte!" that is "Almighty," a favourite Dutch expression. Marie was the first to perceive that I had come to life again.
At this Doornkop he had already caused a rough house, or rather shed, to be built for the Vrouw Retief's occupation, thinking that she would be more comfortable and perhaps safer there during his absence than at the crowded camp in a wagon. "Allemachte! Allan," he said, catching sight of me, "my heart is sore; I do not know why.
Here he stepped forward a pace and looked down at me, then added with a laugh, "Allemachte! I fear that won't be just at present. Why, the lad looks as though one might blow him away like a feather."
To me he spoke in Dutch, and occasionally in French to Marie. It was a most curious and polyglot conversation. "That is true, mynheer," I said. "I only waited an opportunity to tell you that we plighted our troth during the attack of the Quabies on this house." "Allemachte!
"Mynheer Retief," I said, "I gave you notice that I intended to try to kill both of them, did I not?" "You did. Allemachte! you did! But tell me, Allan Quatermain, are your eye and hand quite human?" "You must ask my father," I answered with a shrug as I sat myself down upon my stool and mopped my brow.
"Allemachte!" said Retief when I had finished, "this is a strange story, the strangest that ever I heard. If it is true, Hernan Pereira, you deserve to have your back set against a tree and to be shot." "God in heaven!" he answered, "am I to be condemned on such a tale I, an innocent man? Where is the evidence?
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