“I can get you a couple of niggers,” mused Mills, “an’ you’ll want a gun.  Then, with skoff for a fortnight, you ought to be up at the Mazoe before they find your spoor.  What do you think?”

“I think i’s ver’ naice,” smiled the other.

“Then we’ll hamba lala” (go to sleep), said Mills rising.  “I don’t know how you feel, but I’m just done up.”

A bed was soon fixed for the Frenchman, who retired with a light-hearted “goo’ night.”  Mills, keeping full in view his guest’s awkward position, and the necessity for packing him off at daylight, determined not to sleep.  He went out of the kraal and listened to the night.  It spoke with a thousand voices; the great factory of days and nights was in full swing; but he caught no sound of human approach, and returned to the huts to prepare his guest’s kit for the departure.  He found and partially cleaned an old rifle, and unpacked a generous donation of cartridges.  Meal for the carriers, blankets and tinned meats for the Frenchman, were all at hand.  Candles, a lantern, matches, gin, a pannikin, a pair of pots, and so on, soon completed the outfit.  Packing is generally an interesting operation, and Mills was an expert in it.  He forgot most of his perplexity and ill-ease as he adjusted the bundles and measured the commodities.  He had the whole of the gear spread out on the floor of the skoff kia when a voice accosted him.

“You needn’t bother no more, Jack,” it said softly.

A man tiptoed in.  He was short and lightly built, and carried a sporting rifle in his hand.  His reddish moustache was draggled with dew and his clothes were soaked in it.  He looked at Mills with gleeful blue eyes.

“Where’s Frenchy?” he asked softly.

Mills labored to express surprise.  “What’re you talkin’ about?” he demanded loudly.

“Don’t shout, blast yer!” whispered the other vehemently.  “We saw yer go up ’ere together, Jack, and nobody ain’t gone away since.  There’s five of us, Jack, and we want that swine—­we want ’im bad.”

“What for?” asked Mills desperately, without lowering his voice.

The other made an impatient gesture for silence, but his words were arrested by a clamor in the yard.  There were shouts and curses and the sound of blows.

“We’ve got him, Charley,” shouted some one triumphantly.

The smaller man rushed out, and Mills followed swiftly.  There was a blackness of moving forms in the open, and some one struck a match.  The man called Charley stepped forward.  Mills saw the face and hand of a man standing upright, brilliantly illuminated by the flame of the match; and on the ground three men, who knelt on and about a prostrate figure.  One was busy with some cord.  In the background stood Mills’s Kafirs.  The match burned down to the holder’s fingers, and he dropped it.

“Well, Dave,” said Mills, “what’s the meanin’ o’ this game o’ yours—­ comin’ to a man’s kia in the middle o’ the night and ropin’ his mate out o’ bed?”