So we went, in double-quick time I can assure you, or at any rate as fast as my stiff limbs and general condition would allow.  Fortunately we had now no doubt as to our direction, since standing up through the mists of dawn with the sunbeams resting on its forest-clad crest, we could clearly see the strange, tumulus-shaped hill which the White Kendah called the Holy Mount, the Home of the Child.  It appeared to be about twenty miles away, but in reality was a good deal farther, for when we had walked for several hours it seemed almost as distant as ever.

In truth that was a dreadful trudge.  Not only was I exhausted with all the terrors I had passed and our long midnight flight, but the wound where Jana had pinched out a portion of my frame, inflamed by the riding, had now grown stiff and intolerably sore, so that every step gave me pain which sometimes culminated in agony.  Moreover, it was no use giving in, foodless as we were, for Marut had carried the provisions, and with the chance of Jana returning to look us up.  So I stuck to it and said nothing.

For the first ten miles the country seemed uninhabited; doubtless it was too near the borders of the Black Kendah to be popular as a place of residence.  After this we saw herds of cattle and a few camels, apparently untended; perhaps their guards were hidden away in the long grass.  Then we came to some fields of mealies that were, I noticed, quite untouched by the hailstorm, which, it would seem, had confined its attentions to the land of the Black Kendah.  Of these we ate thankfully enough.  A little farther on we perceived huts perched on an inaccessible place in a kloof.  Also their inhabitants perceived us, for they ran away as though in a great fright.

Still we did not try to approach the huts, not knowing how we should be received.  After my sojourn in Simba Town I had become possessed of a love of life in the open.

For another two hours I limped forward with pain and grief—­by now I was leaning on Hans’ shoulder—­up an endless, uncultivated rise clothed with euphorbias and fern-like cycads.  At length we reached its top and found ourselves within a rifle shot of a fenced native village.  I suppose that its inhabitants had been warned of our coming by runners from the huts I have mentioned.  At any rate the moment we appeared the men, to the number of thirty or more, poured out of the south gate armed with spears and other weapons and proceeded to ring us round and behave in a very threatening manner.  I noticed at once that, although most of them were comparatively light in colour, some of these men partook of the negro characteristics of the Black Kendah from whom we had escaped, to such an extent indeed that this blood was clearly predominant in them.  Still, it was also clear that they were deadly foes of this people, for when I shouted out to them that we were the friends of Harut and those who worshipped the Child, they yelled back that we were liars.  No friends of the Child, they said, came from the country of the Black Kendah, who worshipped the devil Jana.  I tried to explain that least of all men in the world did we worship Jana, who had been hunting us for hours, but they would not listen.