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Updated: May 21, 2025
I believed that in this way most temerarious deeds are done; the doer has become insensible to danger, and his imagination is clouded with some engrossing purpose. The first sentries received us gloomily enough, and closed behind us as they had done when Machudi's men haled me thither. Then the job became eerie, for we had to walk across a green flat with thousands of eyes watching us.
'There are several objections, I said, quite cheerfully, for I felt that I was gaining ground. 'One is that I could not explain to any mortal soul how to find the collar. I know where it is, but I could not impart the knowledge. Another is that the country between here and Machudi's is not very healthy for your people.
Out at Umvelos' there is a tobacco-factory, and all round Sikitola's we have square miles of mealie and cotton fields. The loch on the Rooirand is stocked with Lochleven trout, and we have made a bridle-path up to it in a gully east of the one you climbed. You ask about Machudi's.
When I look at the map and see the journey which with vast fatigue I completed from Dupree's Drift to Machudi's, and then look at the huge spaces of country over which Laputa's legs took him on that night, I am lost in admiration of the man. About midnight he must have crossed the Letsitela. Here he made a grave blunder.
Arcoll's hands closed firmly on my wrists. 'You left Laputa at Machudi's and rode here without stopping. That would take you an hour. Had Laputa a horse? 'Yes; but I took it, I stammered. 'You can see it behind me. Arcoll dropped my hands and stood up straight. 'By God, we've got him! he said, and he spoke to his companions. A man turned and ran out of the tent.
Ask Machudi's men and they will tell you that I came quietly with them, when I saw that the game was up. He shrugged his shoulders. 'It matters very little what you did. You are here now. Tie him up and put him in my kya, he said to the bodyguard. 'I have something to say to him before he dies. As the men laid hands on me, I saw the exultant grin on Henriques' face.
We climbed up the burn, over the succession of little cataracts, till we came to the flat space of shingle and the long pool where I had been taken that morning. The ashes of the fire which Machudi's men had made were plain on the rock. After that I had to climb a waterfall to get to the rocky pool where I had bestowed the rubies. 'You must take off this thong, I said.
The men nodded, and set to work to make a kind of litter out of their knobkerries and some old ropes they carried. As they worked and chattered I looked idly at the left bank of the ravine that is, the left as you ascend it. Some of Machudi's men had come down there, and, though the place looked sheer and perilous, I saw how they had managed it.
I remember feeling a puny weakling compared with those lusty natives who could make such good going on steep mountains. They were certainly no men of the plains, but hillmen, probably some remnants of old Machudi's tribe who still squatted in the glen. Machudi was a blackguard chief whom the Boers long ago smashed in one of their native wars.
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