To me, I know not why, there was something horrible in all this jocosity, something that gave me the creeps as always does the sight of a cat playing with a mouse.  I felt even then that it foreshadowed terrible things.  How could these men know the details of occurrences at which they were not present and of which no one had told them?  Did that strange “tobacco” of theirs really give them some clairvoyant power, I wondered, or had they other secret methods of obtaining news?  I glanced at poor Savage and perceived that he too felt as I did, for he had turned quite pale beneath his tan.  Even Hans was affected, for he whispered to me in Dutch:  “These are not men; these are devils, Baas, and this journey of ours is one into hell.”

Only Ragnall sat stern, silent, and apparently quite unmoved.  Indeed there was something almost sphinx-like about the set and expression of his handsome face.  Moreover, I felt sure that Harut and Marut recognized the man’s strength and determination and that he was one with whom they must reckon seriously.  Beneath all their smiles and courtesies I could read this knowledge in their eyes; also that it was causing them grave anxiety.  It was as though they knew that here was one against whom their power had no avail, whose fate was the master of their fate.  In a sense Harut admitted this to me, for suddenly he looked up and said in a changed voice and in Bantu: 

“You are a good reader of hearts, O Macumazana, almost as good as I am.  But remember that there is One Who writes upon the book of the heart, Who is the Lord of us who do but read, and that what He writes, that will befall, strive as we may, for in His hands is the future.”

“Quite so,” I replied coolly, “and that is why I am going with you to Kendahland and fear you not at all.”

“So it is and so let it be,” he answered.  “And now, Lords, are you ready to start?  For long is the road and who knows what awaits us ere we see its end?”

“Yes,” I replied, “long is the road of life and who knows what awaits us ere we see its end—­and after?”

Three hours later I halted the splendid white riding-camel upon which I was mounted, and looked back from the crest of a wave of the desert.  There far behind us on the horizon, by the help of my glasses, I could make out the site of the camp we had left and even the tall ant-hill whence I had gazed in the moonlight at our mysterious escort which seemed to have sprung from the desert as though by magic.

This was the manner of our march:  A mile or so ahead of us went a picket of eight or ten men mounted on the swiftest beasts, doubtless to give warning of any danger.  Next, three or four hundred yards away, followed a body of about fifty Kendah, travelling in a double line, and behind these the baggage men, mounted like everyone else, and leading behind them strings of camels laden with water, provisions, tents of skin and all our goods, including the fifty rifles and the ammunition that Ragnall had brought from England.  Then came we three white men and Hans, each of us riding as swift and fine a camel as Africa can breed.  On our right at a distance of about half a mile, and also on our left, travelled other bodies of the Kendah of the same numerical strength as that ahead, while the rear was brought up by the remainder of the company who drove a number of spare camels.