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Updated: August 29, 2024
"But one month gone my mistress the Shepherdess spoke to her father Mavoom, telling him that she wearied of their lonely life in the wilderness and wished to sail across the waters to the land which is called Home. He listened to her, for Mavoom loves his daughter, and said that it should be so.
"Get up, you fool," said the dwarf roughly, "and if there are any more of the men of Mavoom here, show them to us: quick, or you will soon be fast again." "There should be forty or more," Peter answered, recovering himself, "besides a few women and children. The rest of us are dead, except the Shepherdess alone, and she is yonder."
Still, the last time that he started he left his daughter, the Shepherdess, at Durban, and there she stayed for three years learning those things that the white women know, for she is very clever, as clever as she is beautiful and good. Now, for nearly two years she has been back at the Settlement, for she came to Delagoa Bay in a ship, and I with her, and Mavoom met us.
But once Mavoom stopped in a town, at Durban in Natal, and getting drunk he gambled away all his money in a month, and once he lost it in a river, the boat being overset by a river-horse and the ivory and gold sinking out of sight.
"If you will help me, I offer to give you that stone, which I have borne hidden about me for many years, tellings its story to none, no, not even to Mavoom. I offer to give it to you now if you will promise to attempt the rescue of my mistress, for I know by your eyes that if once you promise you will not desert the quest;" and she paused, looking at him keenly.
"I don't know much of cannon," said Leonard doubtfully. "But I know something, White Man," said Soa, speaking for the first time. "Mavoom, my master, has a small one up at the Settlement, and often I have helped to fire it for practice and as a signal to boats on the river, and so have many of the men who were carried away, if we can find them yonder." "Good," said Leonard.
"Praise him, ye people, who broke the strength of the oppressor. "Praise him, the Shepherd of the Shepherdess, who led her from the house of the wicked. "Praise him, ye Children of Mavoom, in whose hands are death and life. "No such deeds have been told of in the land. Praise him, the Deliverer, who gives you back your children!" "Ay, praise him!" said Juanna, who was standing by.
"How is the white man named?" asked Leonard. "The black people call him Mavoom, but his white name is Rodd. He is a good master and no common man, but he has this fault, that at times he is drunken. Twenty years ago or more Mavoom, my lord, married a white woman, a Portuguese whose father dwelt at Delagoa Bay, and who was beautiful, ah! beautiful.
And now do my ears betray me, or do I hear you say that you and your brethren, who with many another were saved from shame and toil by the Deliverer, are about to leave him in his hour of danger?" "You have heard aright, Shepherdess," the man answered sadly. "It is well, Peter. Go, children of Mavoom, my father, who can desert me in my need.
That evening, as Leonard, Juanna, and the priest sat at meat within the walls of the Settlement-house, with the plunder of the slave camp piled about them, talking anxiously of the fate of Mr. Rodd and wondering if anything could be done to discover his whereabouts, they heard a stir among the natives without. At this moment Otter rushed in, crying: "Mavoom has come!"
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