“Quite so, O Macumazana.  Also that is a very good saying as some of those hunters of yours are thinking now.  Yet an hour ago they were forcing their shillings on me that I might tell them of the future.  And you, too, want to know something.  You did not come through that gate to quote to me the wisdom of your holy book.  What is it, Baba?  Be quick, for my Snake is getting very tired.  He wishes to go back to his hole in the world beneath.”

“Well, then,” I answered in rather a shamefaced fashion, for Mavovo had an uncanny way of seeing into one’s secret motives, “I should like to know, if you can tell me, which you can’t, what has become of the white man with the long beard whom you black people call Dogeetah?  He should have been here to go on this journey with us; indeed, he was to be our guide and we cannot find him.  Where is he and why is he not here?”

“Have you anything about you that belonged to Dogeetah, Macumazana?”

“No,” I answered; “that is, yes,” and from my pocket I produced the stump of pencil that Brother John had given me, which, being economical, I had saved up ever since.  Mavovo took it, and after considering it carefully as he had done in the case of the feathers, swept up a pile of ashes with his horny hand from the edge of the largest of the little fires, that indeed which had represented myself.  These ashes he patted flat.  Then he drew on them with the point of the pencil, tracing what seemed to me to be the rough image of a man, such as children scratch upon whitewashed walls.  When he had finished he sat up and contemplated his handiwork with all the satisfaction of an artist.  A breeze had risen from the sea and was blowing in little gusts, so that the fine ashes were disturbed, some of the lines of the picture being filled in and others altered or enlarged.

For a while Mavovo sat with his eyes shut.  Then he opened them, studied the ashes and what remained of the picture, and taking a blanket that lay near by, threw it over his own head and over the ashes.  Withdrawing it again presently he cast it aside and pointed to the picture which was now quite changed.  Indeed, in the moonlight, it looked more like a landscape than anything else.

“All is clear, my father,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice.  “The white wanderer, Dogeetah, is not dead.  He lives, but he is sick.  Something is the matter with one of his legs so that he cannot walk.  Perhaps a bone is broken or some beast has bitten him.  He lies in a hut such as Kaffirs make, only this hut has a verandah round it like your stoep, and there are drawings on the wall.  The hut is a long way off, I don’t know where.”

“Is that all?” I asked, for he paused.

“No, not all.  Dogeetah is recovering.  He will join us in that country whither we journey, at a time of trouble.  That is all, and the fee is half-a-crown.”

“You mean one shilling,” I suggested.