“Hail, O king!” I said, rising.

“Yes, Macumazahn.  King at last, by the might of your three right hands,” was the ready answer.

All was, he said, going well; and he hoped to arrange a great feast in two weeks’ time in order to show himself to the people.

I asked him what he had settled to do with Gagool.

“She is the evil genius of the land,” he answered, “and I shall kill her, and all the witch doctors with her!  She has lived so long that none can remember when she was not very old, and she it is who has always trained the witch-hunters, and made the land wicked in the sight of the heavens above.”

“Yet she knows much,” I replied; “it is easier to destroy knowledge, Ignosi, than to gather it.”

“That is so,” he said thoughtfully.  “She, and she only, knows the secret of the ‘Three Witches,’ yonder, whither the great road runs, where the kings are buried, and the Silent Ones sit.”

“Yes, and the diamonds are.  Forget not thy promise, Ignosi; thou must lead us to the mines, even if thou hast to spare Gagool alive to show the way.”

“I will not forget, Macumazahn, and I will think on what thou sayest.”

After Ignosi’s visit I went to see Good, and found him quite delirious.  The fever set up by his wound seemed to have taken a firm hold of his system, and to be complicated with an internal injury.  For four or five days his condition was most critical; indeed, I believe firmly that had it not been for Foulata’s indefatigable nursing he must have died.

Women are women, all the world over, whatever their colour.  Yet somehow it seemed curious to watch this dusky beauty bending night and day over the fevered man’s couch, and performing all the merciful errands of a sick-room swiftly, gently, and with as fine an instinct as that of a trained hospital nurse.  For the first night or two I tried to help her, and so did Sir Henry as soon as his stiffness allowed him to move, but Foulata bore our interference with impatience, and finally insisted upon our leaving him to her, saying that our movements made him restless, which I think was true.  Day and night she watched him and tended him, giving him his only medicine, a native cooling drink made of milk, in which was infused juice from the bulb of a species of tulip, and keeping the flies from settling on him.  I can see the whole picture now as it appeared night after night by the light of our primitive lamp; Good tossing to and fro, his features emaciated, his eyes shining large and luminous, and jabbering nonsense by the yard; and seated on the ground by his side, her back resting against the wall of the hut, the soft-eyed, shapely Kukuana beauty, her face, weary as it was with her long vigil, animated by a look of infinite compassion—­or was it something more than compassion?

For two days we thought that he must die, and crept about with heavy hearts.

Only Foulata would not believe it.