“What was the accident, Allan?” she asked.  “It looks as though there had been a bullet in it,” and she pointed to the bloody smear upon my cheek.

I nodded.

“Pereira’s?” she asked again.

I nodded a second time.

“Did you kill him?”

“No; I let him go.  It would have been said that I murdered him,” and I told her what had happened.

“Ja, Allan,” she remarked when I had finished.  “I think you were wise, for you could have proved nothing.  But oh! for what fate, I wonder, is God Almighty saving up that stinkcat.  Well, I will go and tell Marie that you are back safe, for her father won’t let her out of the hut so late; but nothing more unless you wish it.”

“No, Tante; I think nothing more, at any rate at present.”

Here I may state, however, that within a few days Marie and everyone else in the camp knew the story in detail, except perhaps Marais, to whom no one spoke of his nephew.  Evidently Vrouw Prinsloo had found herself unable to keep secret such an example of the villainy of her aversion, Pereira.  So she told her daughter, who told the others quickly enough, though I gathered that some of them set down what had happened to accident.  Bad as they knew Pereira to be, they could not believe that he was guilty of so black a crime.

About a week later the rest of us started from Marais’s camp, a place that, notwithstanding the sadness of many of its associations, I confess I left with some regret.  The trek before us, although not so very long, was of an extremely perilous nature.  We had to pass through about two hundred miles of country of which all we knew was that its inhabitants were the Amatonga and other savage tribes.  Here I should explain that after much discussion we had abandoned the idea of retracing the route followed by Marais on his ill-fated journey towards Delagoa.

Had we taken this it would have involved our crossing the terrible Lobombo Mountains, over which it was doubtful whether our light cattle could drag the wagons.  Moreover, the country beyond the mountains was said to be very bare of game and also of Kaffirs, so that food might be lacking.  On the other hand, if we kept to the east of the mountains the veld through which we must pass was thickly populated, which meant that in all probability we could buy grain.

What finally decided us to adopt this route, however, was that here in these warm, low-lying lands there would be grass for the oxen.  Indeed, now, at the beginning of spring, in this part of Africa it was already pushing.  Even if it were not, the beasts could live upon what herbage remained over from last summer and on the leaves of trees, neither of which in this winter veld ever become quite lifeless, whereas on the sere and fire-swept plains beyond the mountains they might find nothing at all.  So we determined to risk the savages and the lions which followed the game into these hot districts, especially as it was not yet the fever season or that of the heavy rains, so that the rivers would be fordable.