kind, which stood among trees by the side of a stream several miles on this side of the great belt of bush.
“Look, Baas,” said Hans, “those wanderers did not lie; there is the house of the white man. I wonder if he drinks anything stronger than water,” he added with a sigh and a kind of reminiscent contraction of his yellow throat.
As it happened, he did.
CHAPTER V
INEZ
We had sighted the house from far away shortly after sunrise and by midday we were there. As we approached I saw that it stood almost immediately beneath two great baobab trees, babyan trees we call them in South Africa, perhaps because monkeys eat their fruit. It was a thatched house with whitewashed walls and a stoep or veranda round it, apparently of the ordinary Dutch type. Moreover, beyond it, at a little distance were other houses or rather shanties with waggon sheds, etc., and beyond and mixed up with these a number of native huts. Further on were considerable fields green with springing corn; also we saw herds of cattle grazing on the slopes. Evidently our white man was rich.
Umslopogaas surveyed the place with a soldier’s eye and said to me,
“This must be a peaceful country, Macumazahn, where no attack is feared, since of defences I see none.”
“Yes,” I answered, “why not, with a wilderness behind it and bush-veld and a great river in front?”
“Men can cross rivers and travel through bush-veld,” he answered, and was silent.
Up to this time we had seen no one, although it might have been presumed that a waggon trekking towards the house was a sufficiently unusual sight to have attracted attention.
“Where can they be?” I asked.
“Asleep, Baas, I think,” said Hans, and as a matter of fact he was right. The whole population of the place was indulging in a noonday siesta.
At last we came so near to the house that I halted the waggon and descended from the driving-box in order to investigate. At this moment someone did appear, the sight of whom astonished me not a little, namely, a very striking-looking young woman. She was tall, handsome, with large dark eyes, good features, a rather pale complexion, and I think the saddest face that I ever saw. Evidently she had heard the noise of the waggon and had come out to see what caused it, for she had nothing on her head, which was covered with thick hair of a raven blackness. Catching sight of the great Umslopogaas with his gleaming axe and of his savage-looking bodyguard, she uttered an exclamation and not unnaturally turned to fly.
“It’s all right,” I sang out, emerging from behind the oxen, and in English, though before the words had left my lips I reflected that there was not the slightest reason to suppose that she would understand them. Probably she was Dutch, or Portuguese, although by some instinct I had addressed her in English.
To my surprise she answered me in the same tongue, spoken, it is true, with a peculiar accent which I could not place, as it was neither Scotch nor Irish.
“Thank you,” she said. “I, sir, was frightened. Your friends look——” Here she stumbled for a word, then added, “terrocious.”
I laughed at this composite adjective and answered,
“Well, so they are in a way, though they will not harm you or me. But, young lady, tell me, can we outspan here? Perhaps your husband——”
“I have no husband, I have only a father, sir,” and she sighed.
“Well, then, could I speak to your father? My name is Allan Quatermain and I am making a journey of exploration, to find out about the country beyond, you know.”
“Yes, I will go to wake him. He is asleep. Everyone sleeps here at midday—except me,” she said with another sigh.
“Why do you not follow their example?” I asked jocosely, for this young woman puzzled me and I wanted to find out about her.
“Because I sleep little, sir, who think too much. There will be plenty of time to sleep soon for all of us, will there not?”
I stared at her and inquired her name, because I did not know what else to say.
“My name is Inez Robertson,” she answered. “I will go to wake my father. Meanwhile please unyoke your oxen. They can feed with the others; they look as though they wanted rest, poor things.” Then she turned and went into the house.
“Inez Robertson,” I said to myself, “that’s a queer combination. English father and Portuguese mother, I suppose. But what can an Englishman be doing in a place like this? If it had been a trek-Boer I should not have been surprised.” Then I began to give directions about out-spanning.
We had just got the oxen out of the yokes, when a big, raw-boned, red-bearded, blue-eyed, roughly-clad man of about fifty years of age appeared from the house, yawning. I threw my eye over him as he advanced with a peculiar rolling gait, and formed certain conclusions. A drunkard who has once been a gentleman, I reflected to myself, for there was something peculiarly dissolute in his appearance, also one who has had to do with the sea, a diagnosis which proved very accurate.
“How do you do, Mr. Allan Quatermain, which I think my daughter said is your name, unless I dreamed it, for it is one that I seem to have heard before,” he exclaimed with a broad Scotch accent which I do not attempt to reproduce. “What in the name of blazes brings you here where no real white man has been for years? Well, I am glad enough to see you any way, for I am sick of half-breed Portuguese and niggers, and snuff-and-butter girls, and gin and bad whisky. Leave your people to attend to those oxen and come in and have a drink.”
“Thank you, Mr. Robertson——”
“Captain Robertson,” he interrupted. “Man, don’t look astonished. You mightn’t guess it, but I commanded a mail-steamer once and should like to hear myself called rightly again before I die.”
“I beg your pardon—Captain Robertson, but myself, I don’t drink anything before sundown. However, if you have something to eat——?”
“Oh yes, Inez—she’s my daughter—will find you a bite. Those men of yours,” and he also looked doubtfully at Umslopogaas and his savage company, “will want food as well. I’ll have a beast killed for them; they look as if they could eat it, horns and all. Where are my people? All asleep, I suppose, the lazy lubbers. Wait a bit, I’ll wake them up.”
Going to the house he snatched a great sjambok cut from hippopotamus hide, from where it hung on a nail in the wall, and ran towards the group of huts which I have mentioned, roaring out the name Thomaso, also a string of oaths such as seamen use, mixed with others of a Portuguese variety. What happened there I could not see because boughs were in the way, but presently I heard blows and screams, and caught sight of people, all dark-skinned, flying from the huts.
A little
