le Axe.

CHAPTER XXIV

UMSLOPOGAAS WEARS THE GREAT MEDICINE

A little while later we started, some of us in litters, including the
wounded Zulus, who I insisted should be carried for a day or two, and
some on foot. Inez I caused to be borne immediately in front of myself
so that I could keep an eye upon her. Moreover I put her in the especial
charge of Hans, to whom fortunately she took a great fancy at once,
perhaps because she remembered subconsciously that she knew him and that
he had been kind to her, although when they met after her long sleep, as
in my own case, she did not recognise him in the least.

Soon, however, they were again the fastest of friends, so much so that
within a day or two the little Hottentot practically filled the place of
a maid to her, attending to her every want and looking after her
exactly as a nurse does after a child, with the result that it was quite
touching to see how she came to depend upon him, "her monkey," as she
called him, and how fond he grew of her.

Once, indeed, there was trouble, since hearing a noise, I came up to
find Hans bristling with fury and threatening to shoot one of the Zulus,
who stupidly, or perhaps rudely, had knocked against the litter of Inez
and nearly turned it over. For the rest, the Lady Sad-Eyes, as they
called her, had for the time became the Lady Glad-Eyes, since she was
merry as the day was long, laughing and singing and playing just as a
healthy happy child should do.

Only once did I see her wretched and weep. It was when a kitten which
she had insisted on bringing with her, sprang out of the litter and
vanished into some bush where it could not be found. Even when she
was soon consoled and dried her tears, when Hans explained to her in a
mixture of bad English and worse Portuguese, that it had only run away
because it wished to get back to its mother which it loved, and that it
was cruel to separate it from its mother.

We made good progress and by the evening of the first day were over the
crest of the cliff or volcano lip that encircles the great plain of Kor,
and descending rapidly to a sheltered spot on the outer slope where our
camp was to be set for the night.

Not very far from this place, as I think I have mentioned, stood, and I
suppose still stands, a very curious pinnacle of rock, which, doubtless
being of some harder sort, had remained when, hundreds of thousands or
millions of years before, the surrounding lava had been w