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Updated: June 27, 2025
Slipping his bridle from the branch, I led him a little way into the bush in the direction of the Rooirand. Then I spoke to Colin. 'Home with you, I said. 'Home, old man, as if you were running down a tsessebe. The dog seemed puzzled. 'Home, I said again, pointing west in the direction of the Berg. 'Home, you brute. And then he understood.
Close on its heels came the message from Henriques by a Shangaan in his pay. It must have been sent off before the Portugoose got to the Rooirand, from which it would appear that he had his own men in the bush near the store, and that I was lucky to get off as I did. Arcoll might have disregarded Henriques' news as a trap if it had come alone, but my corroboration impressed and perplexed him.
In any case he was outside the Kaffir pale, adventuring on his own. I watched the two till they halted near a ruined building. Surely this was the store I had built at Umvelos'. The thought gave me a horrid surprise. Laputa and Henriques were on their way to the Rooirand! I woke with a start to find my forehead damp with sweat. There was some fever on me, I think, for my teeth were chattering.
Then I remembered what I wanted to say. I struggled from the bed and put my hands on his shoulders. 'Laputa is our side of the highroad. Cut him off from his men, and drive him north north away up to the Rooirand. Never mind the Wolkberg and the guns, for they can wait. I tell you Laputa is the Rising, and he has the collar. Without him you can mop up the Kaffirs at your leisure.
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.
The natives had given up witchcraft and big medicine, they said, and were more afraid of a parson or a policeman than any witch-doctor. Then they were starting on reminiscences, when old Coetzee, who was deaf, broke in and asked to have my question repeated. 'Yes, he said, 'I know. It is in the Rooirand. There is a devil dwells there.
But the greatest river of the plain, into which the others ultimately flow, is the Groot Labongo, which appears full-born from some subterranean source close to the place called Umvelos'. North from Blaauwildebeestefontein the Berg runs for some twenty miles, and then makes a sharp turn eastward, becoming, according to my map, the Rooirand.
In front of the great hall of the college a statue stands, the figure of a black man shading his eyes with his hands and looking far over the plains to the Rooirand. On the pedestal it is lettered 'Prester John, but the face is the face of Laputa. So the last of the kings of Africa does not lack his monument. Of this institution Mr Wardlaw is the head.
It must have told Laputa what had always been in the Portugoose's heart. Henriques, I fancy, was making for the cave in the Rooirand. Laputa, so far as I can guess at his mind, had a plan for getting over the Portuguese border, fetching a wide circuit, and joining his men at any of the concentrations between there and Amsterdam.
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