“The land of our people, Chief,” they answered, “which is bordered on one side by the bush and on the other by the great lake where live the Pongo wizards.”

I looked about me at the bare uplands that already were beginning to turn brown, on which nothing was visible save vast herds of buck such as were common further south.  A dreary prospect it was, for a slight rain was falling, accompanied by mist and a cold wind.

“I do not see your people or their kraals,” I said; “I only see grass and wild game.”

“Our people will come,” they replied, rather nervously.  “No doubt even now their spies watch us from among the tall grass or out of some hole.”

“The deuce they do,” I said, or something like it, and thought no more of the matter.  When one is in conditions in which anything may happen, such as, so far as I am concerned, have prevailed through most of my life, one grows a little careless as to what will happen.  For my part I have long been a fatalist, to a certain extent.  I mean I believe that the individual, or rather the identity which animates him, came out from the Source of all life a long while, perhaps hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago, and when his career is finished, perhaps hundreds of thousands or millions of years hence, or perhaps to-morrow, will return perfected, but still as an individual, to dwell in or with that Source of Life.  I believe also that his various existences, here or elsewhere, are fore-known and fore-ordained, although in a sense he may shape them by the action of his free will, and that nothing which he can do will lengthen or shorten one of them by a single hour.  Therefore, so far as I am concerned, I have always acted up to the great injunction of our Master and taken no thought for the morrow.

However, in this instance, as in many others of my experience, the morrow took plenty of thought for itself.  Indeed, before the dawn, Hans, who never seemed really to sleep any more than a dog does, woke me up with the ominous information that he heard a sound which he thought was caused by the tramp of hundreds of marching men.

“Where?” I asked, after listening without avail—­to look was useless, for the night was dark as pitch.

He put his ear to the ground and said: 

“There.”

I put my ear to the ground, but although my senses are fairly acute, could hear nothing.

Then I sent for the sentries, but these, too, could hear nothing. 
After this I gave the business up and went to sleep again.

However, as it proved, Hans was quite right; in such matters he generally was right, for his senses were as keen as those of any wild beast.  At dawn I was once more awakened, this time by Mavovo, who reported that we were being surrounded by a regiment, or regiments.  I rose and looked out through the mist.  There, sure enough, in dim and solemn outline, though still far off, I perceived rank upon rank of men, armed men, for the light glimmered faintly upon their spears.