.

"... There were Bushmen, then wild dwarf men who shot with poisoned
arrows, and had seen no white man before . . . .

"Alvaro Nunes had still five charges for his arquebus, and I as many
for my hand petronel. . . . When they heard the thunder of the powder
they cast aside their weapons and crawled to us on their knees, taking
us for gods. . . . And bearing in mind all that the shipwrecked
Castilian we had found at Cabo Tormentoso had told us of the mine of
precious stones, we hastened to propitiate them in every way. . . . The
gauds we had brought, gay beads, bright kerchiefs, and the like with
these we won our way to their goodwill. They hunted for us; of buck and
of wild game they brought us abundance; but though months passed we
were no nearer that which we sought the mine of bright stones such as
the Spanisher had shown us and the whereabouts of which these strange
black, dwarfish people alone knew. Never could we master their strange
tongue like to the creaking and rustling of dry bones upon a gibbet
more than the speech of humans and time and patience alone showed us a
way. Their man of magic held great power over them. He was of another
race, of our own stature, and with a yellow skin. He had another tongue
than these dwarf men of the bush, and this Alvaro and I learnt when his
suspicion of us gave way and he found that we wished not to alienate
the tribe from his authority. . . . For the Spanisher had said: 'Their
magician, because of his black magic, he alone hath the secret of the
mine of stones like unto those of Golconda.' . . . Little did we fear
his magic we who feared nothing in heaven or earth or in the waters
beneath Alvaro and I, old freebooters of the Spanish Main; but they
others Luiz Fonseca, Jose Albuquerque, and Antonio Mendez brave men,
but ignorant shipmen, they were fearful of the witch-doctor and his
black art.

"Then when N'buqu, the witch, had heard all of the wonders of our land
across the great water, he would fain plot to come with us and see all
these wondrous things of which we spake. And cunningly Alvaro led him
on day by day until he was all impatient to leave this tribe of dwarfs,
who were not even his own kinsmen. Then when all was ripe he told him
that with us there were no wild lands full of buck for those who cared
to shoot them, that our wealth was in red gold and shining stones! And
at long last he showed the stone taken from the Spanisher at the Cape
of Storms. . . .