mp,
keeping one litter for Inez in which the Zulus carried her when she
was tired, we accomplished it in complete safety and having crossed the
Zambesi, at last one evening reached the house called Strathmuir.

Here we found the waggon and oxen quite safe and were welcomed
rapturously by my Zulu driver and the _voorlooper_, who had made up
their minds that we were dead and were thinking of trekking homewards.
Here also Thomaso greeted us, though I think that, like the Zulus, he
was astonished at our safe return and indeed not over-pleased to see us.
I told him that Captain Robertson had been killed in a fight in which
we had rescued his daughter from the cannibals who had carried her off
(information which I cautioned him to keep to himself) but nothing else
that I could help.

Also I warned the Zulus through Umslopogaas and Goroko, that no mention
was to be made of our adventures, either then or afterwards, since if
this were done the curse of the White Queen would fall on them and bring
them to disaster and death. I added that the name of this queen and
everything that was connected with her, or her doings, must be locked up
in their own hearts. It must be like the name of dead kings, not to
be spoken. Nor indeed did they ever speak it or tell the story of our
search, because they were too much afraid both of Ayesha whom they
believed to be the greatest of all witches, and of the axe of their
captain, Umslopogaas.

Inez went to bed that night without seeming to recognise her old home,
to all appearance just a mindless child as she had been ever since she
awoke from her trance at Kor. Next morning, however, Hans came to tell
me that she was changed and that she wished to speak with me. I went,
wondering, to find her in the sitting-room, dressed in European clothes
which she had taken from where she kept them, and once more a reasoning
woman.

"Mr. Quatermain," she said, "I suppose that I must have been ill, for
the last thing I remember is going to sleep on the night after you
started for the hippopotamus hunt. Where is my father? Did any harm come
to him while he was hunting?"

"Alas!" I answered, lying boldly, for I feared lest the truth
should take away her mind again, "it did. He was trampled upon by a
hippopotamus bull, which charged him, and killed, and we were obliged to
bury him where he died."

She bowed her head for a while and muttered some prayer for his soul,
then looked at me keenly and said,

"