Now Retief looked at Pereira.

“What do you say to this?” he asked.

“What do I say?” repeated Pereira, recovering himself.  “Why, that it is a lie or a misunderstanding.  I never shot at Heer Allan in any kloof.  Is it likely that I should have done so when he had just nursed me back to life?  I never plotted with the Zulus for his death, which would have meant the deaths of my uncle and my cousin and of all their companions.  Am I mad that I should do such a thing?”

“Not mad, but bad,” screamed the vrouw.  “I tell you, Heer Retief, it is no lie.  Ask those with me,” she added, appealing to the others, who, with the exception of Marais, answered as with one voice: 

“No; it is no lie.”

“Silence!” said the commandant.  “Now, nephew Allan, tell us your story.”

So I told him everything, of course leaving out all details.  Even then the tale was long, though it did not seem to be one that wearied my hearers.

“Allemachte!” said Retief when I had finished, “this is a strange story, the strangest that ever I heard.  If it is true, Hernan Pereira, you deserve to have your back set against a tree and to be shot.”

“God in heaven!” he answered, “am I to be condemned on such a tale—­I, an innocent man?  Where is the evidence?  This Englishman tells all this against me for a simple reason—­that he has robbed me of the love of my cousin, to whom I was affianced.  Where are his witnesses?”

“As to the shooting at me in the kloof, I have none except God who saw you,” I answered.  “As to the plot that you laid against me among the Zulus, as it chances, however, there is one, Kambula, the captain who was sent to take me as you had arranged, and who now commands our escort.”

“A savage!” exclaimed Pereira.  “Is the tale of a savage to be taken against that of a white man?  Also, who will translate his story?  You, Mynheer Quatermain, are the only one here who knows his tongue, if you do know it, and you are my accuser.”

“That is true,” remarked Retief.  “Such a witness should not be admitted without a sworn interpreter.  Now listen; I pass judgment as commandant in the field.  Hernan Pereira, I have known you to be a rogue in the past, for I remember that you cheated this very young man, Allan Quatermain, at a friendly trial of skill at which I was present; but since then till now I have heard nothing more of you, good or bad.  To-day this Allan Quatermain and a number of my own countrymen bring grave charges against you, which, however, at present are not capable of proof or disproof.  Well, I cannot decide those charges, whatever my own opinion may be.  I think that you had better go back with your uncle, Henri Marais, to the trek-Boers, where they can be laid before a court and settled according to law.”

“If so, he will go back alone,” said the Vrouw Prinsloo.  “He will not go back with us, for we will elect a field-cornet and shoot him—­the stinkcat, who left us to starve and afterwards tried to kill little Allan Quatermain, who saved our lives”; and the chorus behind her echoed: