. A drunkard
who has once been a gentleman, I reflected to myself, for there was
something peculiarly dissolute in his appearance, also one who has had
to do with the sea, a diagnosis which proved very accurate.

"How do you do, Mr. Allan Quatermain, which I think my daughter said is
your name, unless I dreamed it, for it is one that I seem to have heard
before," he exclaimed with a broad Scotch accent which I do not attempt
to reproduce. "What in the name of blazes brings you here where no real
white man has been for years? Well, I am glad enough to see you any way,
for I am sick of half-breed Portuguese and niggers, and snuff-and-butter
girls, and gin and bad whisky. Leave your people to attend to those oxen
and come in and have a drink."

"Thank you, Mr. Robertson----"

"Captain Robertson," he interrupted. "Man, don't look astonished. You
mightn't guess it, but I commanded a mail-steamer once and should like
to hear myself called rightly again before I die."

"I beg your pardon--Captain Robertson, but myself, I don't drink
anything before sundown. However, if you have something to eat----?"

"Oh yes, Inez--she's my daughter--will find you a bite. Those men of
yours," and he also looked doubtfully at Umslopogaas and his savage
company, "will want food as well. I'll have a beast killed for them;
they look as if they could eat it, horns and all. Where are my people?
All asleep, I suppose, the lazy lubbers. Wait a bit, I'll wake them up."

Going to the house he snatched a great sjambok cut from hippopotamus
hide, from where it hung on a nail in the wall, and ran towards the
group of huts which I have mentioned, roaring out the name Thomaso, also
a string of oaths such as seamen use, mixed with others of a Portuguese
variety. What happened there I could not see because boughs were in
the way, but presently I heard blows and screams, and caught sight of
people, all dark-skinned, flying from the huts.

A little later a fat, half-breed man--I should say from his curling hair
that his mother was a negress and his father a Portuguese--appeared
with some other nondescript fellows and began to give directions in a
competent fashion about our oxen, also as to the killing of a calf. He
spoke in bastard Portuguese, which I could understand, and I heard him
talk of Umslopogaas to whom he pointed, as "that nigger," after the
fashion of such cross-bred people who choose to consider themselves
white men. Also he made uncomplimen