e a
little longer among savages. Also she had her beloved John, at whom she
would sit and gaze by the hour like a cat sometimes does at a person to
whom it is attached. Indeed, when she spoke to him, her voice seemed
to me to resemble a kind of blissful purr. I think it made the old boy
rather fidgety sometimes, for after an hour or two of it he would rise
and go to hunt for butterflies.

To tell the truth, the situation got a little on my nerves at last, for
wherever I looked I seemed to see there Stephen and Hope making love
to each other, or Brother John and his wife admiring each other, which
didn't leave me much spare conversation. Evidently they thought that
Mavovo, Hans, Sammy, Bausi, Babemba and Co. were enough for me--that is,
if they reflected on the matter at all. So they were, in a sense, for
the Zulu hunters began to get out of hand in the midst of this idleness
and plenty, eating too much, drinking too much native beer, smoking too
much of the intoxicating _dakka_, a mischievous kind of help, and making
too much love to the Mazitu women, which of course resulted in the usual
rows that I had to settle.

At last I struck and said that we must move on as Stephen was now fit to
travel.

"Quite so," said Brother John, mildly. "What have you arranged, Allan?"

With some irritation, for I hated that sentence of Brother John's, I
replied that I had arranged nothing, but that as none of them seemed to
have any suggestions to make, I would go out and talk the matter over
with Hans and Mavovo, which I did.

I need not chronicle the results of our conference since other
arrangements were being made for us at which I little guessed.

It all came very suddenly, as great things in the lives of men and
nations sometimes do. Although the Mazitu were of the Zulu family, their
military organization had none of the Zulu thoroughness. For instance,
when I remonstrated with Bausi and old Babemba as to their not keeping
up a proper system of outposts and intelligence, they laughed at me and
answered that they never had been attacked and now that the Pongo had
learnt a lesson, were never likely to be.

By the way, I see that I have not yet mentioned that at Brother John's
request those Pongos who had been taken prisoners at the Battle of
the Reeds were conducted to the shores of the lake, given one of the
captured canoes and told that they might return to their own happy land.
To our astonishment about three weeks later t