“Friends, doubtless this tale sounds foolish in your ears; but I ask what has been my nickname among you?  Has it not been ’Man of the Mountain,’ because I have always spoken and inquired for a certain mountain which had ridges on it shaped like the fingers of a man’s hand, and have you not thought me mad for this reason?  Now I have heard of such a mountain and I have heard also that Sihamba, who was with my wife, rules there as chieftainess.  Is it strange, therefore, that I, believing now as ever in that vision, should wish to visit this mountain where, as I am sure, I shall find the wife that is lost to me?”

After this the Boers laughed no more but consulted apart till at last the elder, Heer Celliers, spoke.

“Heeren Botmar and Kenzie,” he said, “of all this story of a vision we can say little.  For aught we know it may be true, but if true then it is the work of magic and we will have nothing to do with it.  Should you wish to go to seek this mountain Umpondwana you must go alone, for we cannot alter our plans to trek there with you.  But we counsel you not to go, since no good can come of visions and magic.”

When I heard this I answered him back, but Jan and Ralph went away, and presently I found them talking together outside the laager.

“Let me go alone,” Ralph was saying.

“Nay,” Jan answered, “I will accompany you, for two are better than one; also I shall not sleep till I find out the truth and know whether Suzanne lives or is dead.”

“Indeed! and what is to become of me?” I asked.

“You, vrouw, can stop with the neighbours here, and we will join you in Natal.”

“You will do no such thing, Jan Botmar,” I answered, “for where you two go there I can go.  What!  Am I not sick also with love for my daughter and anxious to learn her fate?”

“As you will, wife,” answered Jan; “perhaps it is well that we three should not separate who have been together always,” and he went to see about the waggon.

As soon as the moon rose, which was about eleven o’clock, the oxen were inspanned.  Before we started, however, several of our friends came praying us not to venture on so perilous a journey; indeed, they threatened even to use force to prevent us, and I think would have done so had not Jan told them outright that we were our own masters and free to go where we wished.  So they departed, grieving over our obstinacy, and little guessing that their danger was far greater than our own, since as it chanced just as they had trekked through the Van Reenen’s Pass a few days later a Zulu impi, returning from the Weenen massacres, fell upon them unawares and killed more than half their number before they were beaten off.