Four days later we started, accompanied by about one hundred and twenty picked men under the command of old Babemba himself, who, he explained, wished to be the last to see us alive in the world.  This was depressing, but other circumstances connected with our start were calculated to weigh even more upon my spirit.  Thus the night before we left Hans arrived and asked me to “write a paper” for him.  I inquired what he wanted me to put in the paper.  He replied that as he was going to his death and had property, namely the L650 that had been left in a bank to his credit, he desired to make a “white man’s will” to be left in the charge of Babemba.  The only provision of the said will was that I was to inherit his property, if I lived.  If I died, which, he added, “of course you must, Baas, like the rest of us,” it was to be devoted to furnishing poor black people in hospital with something comforting to drink instead of the “cow’s water” that was given to them there.  Needless to say I turned him out at once, and that testamentary deposition remained unrecorded.  Indeed it was unnecessary, since, as I reminded him, on my advice he had already made a will before we left Durban, a circumstance that he had quite forgotten.

The second event, which occurred about an hour before our departure, was, that hearing a mighty wailing in the market-place where once Hans and I had been tied to stakes to be shot to death with arrows, I went out to see what was the matter.  At the gateway I was greeted by the sight of about a hundred old women plastered all over with ashes, engaged in howling their loudest in a melancholy unison.  Behind these stood the entire population of Beza-Town, who chanted a kind of chorus.

“What the devil are they doing?” I asked of Hans.

“Singing our death-song, Baas,” he replied stolidly, “as they say that where we are going no one will take the trouble to do so, and it is not right that great lords should die and the heavens above remain uninformed that they are coming.”

“That’s cheerful,” I remarked, and wheeling round, asked Ragnall straight out if he wished to persevere in this business, for to tell the truth my nerve was shaken.

“I must,” he answered simply, “but there is no reason why you and Hans should, or Savage either for the matter of that.”

“Oh!  I’m going where you go,” I said, “and where I go Hans will go.  Savage must speak for himself.”

This he did and to the same effect, being a very honest and faithful man.  It was the more to his credit since, as he informed me in private, he did not enjoy African adventure and often dreamed at nights of his comfortable room at Ragnall whence he superintended the social activities of that great establishment.