thanks for your very remarkable deliverance from a cruel death."

"By all means," I muttered for both of us, and he did so in a most
earnest and beautiful prayer. Brother John may or may not have been
a little touched in the head at this time of his life, but he was
certainly an able and a good man.

Afterwards, as the shrieks and shouting had now died down to a confused
murmur of many voices, we went and sat outside under the projecting
eaves of the hut, where I introduced Stephen Somers to Brother John.

"And now," I said, "in the name of goodness, where do you come from tied
up in flowers like a Roman priest at sacrifice, and riding on a bull
like the lady called Europa? And what on earth do you mean by playing
us such a scurvy trick down there in Durban, leaving us without a word
after you had agreed to guide us to this hellish hole?"

Brother John stroked his long beard and looked at me reproachfully.

"I guess, Allan," he said in his American fashion, "there is a mistake
somewhere. To answer the last part of your question first, I did not
leave you without a word; I gave a letter to that lame old Griqua
gardener of yours, Jack, to be handed to you when you arrived."

"Then the idiot either lost it and lied to me, as Griquas will, or he
forgot all about it."

"That is likely. I ought to have thought of that, Allan, but I didn't.
Well, in that letter I said that I would meet you here, where I should
have been six weeks ago awaiting you. Also I sent a message to Bausi to
warn him of your coming in case I should be delayed, but I suppose that
something happened to it on the road."

"Why did you not wait and come with us like a sensible man?"

"Allan, as you ask me straight out, I will tell you, although the
subject is one of which I do not care to speak. I knew that you were
going to journey by Kilwa; indeed it was your only route with a lot
of people and so much baggage, and I did not wish to visit Kilwa." He
paused, then went on: "A long while ago, nearly twenty-three years to be
accurate, I went to live at Kilwa as a missionary with my young wife. I
built a mission station and a church there, and we were happy and fairly
successful in our work. Then on one evil day the Swahili and other Arabs
came in dhows to establish a slave-dealing station. I resisted them, and
the end of it was that they attacked us, killed most of my people and
enslaved the rest. In that attack I received a cut from a sword on the
hea