ROBERTSON IS LOST

So I went and was conducted by Billali, the old chamberlain, for such seemed to be his office, who had been waiting patiently without all this while, back to our rest-house.  On my way I picked up Hans, whom I found sitting outside the arch, and found that as usual that worthy had been keeping his eyes and ears open.

“Baas,” he said, “did the White Witch tell you that there is a big impi encamped over yonder outside the houses, in what looks like a great dry ditch, and on the edge of the plain beyond?”

“No, Hans, but she said that this evening she would show us those in whose company we must fight.”

“Well, Baas, they are there, some thousands of them, for I crept through the broken walls like a snake and saw them.  And, Baas, I do not think they are men, I think that they are evil spirits who walk at night only.”

“Why, Hans?”

“Because when the sun is high, Baas, as it is now, they are all sleeping.  Yes, there they lie abed, fast asleep, as other people do at night, with only a few sentries out on guard, and these are yawning and rubbing their eyes.”

“I have heard that there are folk like that in the middle of Africa where the sun is very hot, Hans,” I answered, “which perhaps is why She-who-commands is going to take us to see them at night.  Also these people, it seems, are worshippers of the moon.”

“No, Baas, they are worshippers of the devil and that White Witch is his wife.”

“You had better keep your thoughts to yourself, Hans, for whatever she is I think that she can read thoughts from far away, as you guessed last night.  Therefore I would not have any if I were you.”

“No, Baas, or if I must think, henceforth, it shall be only of gin which in this place is also far away,” he replied, grinning.

Then we came to the rest-house where I found that Robertson had already eaten his midday meal and like the Amahagger gone to sleep, while apparently Umslopogaas had done the same; at least I saw nothing of him.  Of this I was glad, since that wondrous Ayesha seemed to draw vitality out of me and after my long talk with her I felt very tired.  So I too ate and then went to lie down under an old wall in the shade at a little distance, and to reflect upon the marvellous things that I had heard.

Here be it said at once that I believed nothing of them, or at least very little indeed.  All the involved tale of Ayesha’s long life I dismissed at once as incredible.  Clearly she was some beautiful woman who was more or less mad and suffered from megalomania; probably an Arab, who had wandered to this place for reasons of her own, and become the chieftainess of a savage tribe whose traditions she had absorbed and reproduced as personal experiences, again for reasons of her own.