“Yes, we did,” said Ghamba, with a horrible half-smile which bared the gums high above the sockets of his tusks.  “She was a young girl who had strayed from a waggon passing over the mountain by the Ladysmith road, only a day’s walk from here.  I pretended to show her the shortest way to her waggon, and thus brought her as far as she could walk in this direction.  I then killed her, and came up here and fetched my sons.  We carried her up in the night.  She was very young and plump, and I have never eaten anything that I enjoyed so much.” (Whitson turned cold with horror.  He remembered the girl’s mysterious disappearance, and the fruitless searches undertaken in consequence.) “His flesh”—­glancing again at Langley—­“looks something like hers did, and I am sure it would taste just as nice.  There was still a little of her left when I went away last week.  If you will go in there and look where the rock is split on the right-hand side, you will—­” But he did not finish the sentence, for a bullet from Whitson’s revolver crushed through his brain, and he tumbled forward on his face into the fire.

It was only after tremendous difficulty that Whitson and Langley succeeded in escaping from the mountains.  However, on the evening of the third day after their adventure in the cave, they came in sight of the police camp.  Whitson sat down on a stone, and motioned his companion to do the same.

“See here, sonny,” he said, “I want to have a short talk with you.  I am a bit cross with you as the cause of my having been sucked in by that d—­d murdering old walrus.  You ought to know the inhabitants of this country better than a simple stranger like me, and so I took your lead.  Now, another thing:  you nearly bust us both by your blasted foolishness in going to sleep that day; but let that pass, because perhaps it would have been worse if we had not been put on our guard; not but that it would take a d—­d smart cannibal to eat Hiram Whitson.  But this is what I am coming to:  you, my boy, are a darned sight too fond of hearing your own tongue clack.  Now, take a warning from me, and don’t let a word of what has happened since we left camp for Pietermaritzburg pass your lips.  I did all the shooting, and I’m not a bit ashamed of it; but, by the eternal God, if you open your lips to a soul, I’ll shoot you like a dog or a cannibal!  Remember that, sonny, and say it quietly over to yourself the first time you feel that you want to blab.  Now, shake hands.”

This was probably the longest speech that Whitson had ever made.

About two years after the events narrated, Whitson took his discharge and returned to America.  He left behind him a sealed packet addressed to his commanding officer, and which was not to be delivered for twelve months after his departure.

Owing, however, to a strange combination of fortuitous circumstances, this packet never reached its proper destination; its wrapper, bearing the address, having been scorched off in a fire which took place in the house where it was left.