he merely said,
'Take it, Macumazahn, take it; you have earned it well,' and, to speak
the truth, though I say it who shouldn't, I think I had. So we pressed
several hundred Matuku bearers into our service, and next day marched
off with the lot.

"Before we went I took a formal farewell of Maiwa, whom we left with a
bodyguard of three hundred men to assist her in settling the country.
She gave me her hand to kiss in a queenly sort of way, and then said,

"'Macumazahn, you are a brave man, and have been a friend to me in my
need. If ever you want help or shelter, remember that Maiwa has a good
memory for friend and foe. All I have is yours.

"And so I thanked her and went. She was certainly a very remarkable
woman. A year or two ago I heard that her father Nala was dead, and that
she had succeeded to the chieftainship of both tribes, which she ruled
with great justice and firmness.

"I can assure you that we ascended the pass leading to Wambe's town with
feelings very different from those with which we had descended it a
few days before. But if I was grateful for the issue of events, you can
easily imagine what poor Every's feelings were. When we got to the top
of the pass, before the whole impi he actually flopped down upon his
knees and thanked Heaven for his escape, the tears running down his
face. But then, as I have said, his nerves were shaken--though now that
his beard was trimmed and he had some sort of clothes on his back, and
hope in his heart, he looked a very different man from the poor wretch
whom we had rescued from death by torture.

"Well, we separated from Nala at the little stairway or pass over the
mountain--Every and I and the ivory going down the river which I had
come up a few weeks before, and the chief returning to his own kraal on
the further side of the mountain. He gave us an escort of a hundred
and fifty men, however, with instructions to accompany us for six days'
journey, and to keep the Matuku bearers in order and then return. I knew
that in six days we should be able to reach a district where porters
were plentiful, and whence we could easily get the ivory conveyed to
Delagoa Bay."

"And did you land it up safe?" I asked.

"Well no," said Quatermain, "we lost about a third of it in crossing a
river. A flood came down suddenly just as the men were crossing and many
of them had to throw down their tusks to save their lives. We had no
means of dragging it up, and so we were obliged to