he hadn't,' said Japp. 'He was always a sullen beggar, and
never spoke much. But he said one queer thing. He asked me if I was
going to retire, and when I told him "yes," he said I had put it off
rather long. I told him I was as healthy as I ever was, and he laughed
in his dirty Portugoose way. "Yes, Mr Japp," he says, "but the country
is not so healthy." I wonder what the chap meant. He'll be dead of
blackwater before many months, to judge by his eyes.'

This talk satisfied me about Japp, who was clearly in desperate fear of
offending me, and disinclined to return for the present to his old
ways. But I think the rest of the afternoon was the most wretched time
in my existence. It was as plain as daylight that we were in for some
grave trouble, trouble to which I believed that I alone held any kind
of clue. I had a pile of evidence--the visit of Henriques was the last
bit--which pointed to some great secret approaching its disclosure. I
thought that that disclosure meant blood and ruin. But I knew nothing
definite. If the commander of a British army had come to me then and
there and offered help, I could have done nothing, only asked him to
wait like me. The peril, whatever it was, did not threaten me only,
though I and Wardlaw and Japp might be the first to suffer; but I had a
terrible feeling that I alone could do something to ward it off, and
just what that something was I could not tell. I was horribly afraid,
not only of unknown death, but of my impotence to play any manly part.
I was alone, knowing too much and yet too little, and there was no
chance of help under the broad sky. I cursed myself for not writing to
Aitken at Lourenco Marques weeks before. He had promised to come up,
and he was the kind of man who kept his word.

In the late afternoon I dragged Wardlaw out for a walk. In his
presence I had to keep up a forced cheerfulness, and I believe the
pretence did me good. We took a path up the Berg among groves of
stinkwood and essenwood, where a failing stream made an easy route. It
may have been fancy, but it seemed to me that the wood was emptier and
that we were followed less closely. I remember it was a lovely
evening, and in the clear fragrant gloaming every foreland of the Berg
stood out like a great ship above the dark green sea of the bush. When
we reached the edge of the plateau we saw the sun sinking between two
far blue peaks in Makapan's country, and away to the south the great