I stared at her and inquired her name, because I did not know what else to say.

“My name is Inez Robertson,” she answered.  “I will go to wake my father.  Meanwhile please unyoke your oxen.  They can feed with the others; they look as though they wanted rest, poor things.”  Then she turned and went into the house.

“Inez Robertson,” I said to myself, “that’s a queer combination.  English father and Portuguese mother, I suppose.  But what can an Englishman be doing in a place like this?  If it had been a trek-Boer I should not have been surprised.”  Then I began to give directions about out-spanning.

We had just got the oxen out of the yokes, when a big, raw-boned, red-bearded, blue-eyed, roughly-clad man of about fifty years of age appeared from the house, yawning.  I threw my eye over him as he advanced with a peculiar rolling gait, and formed certain conclusions.  A drunkard who has once been a gentleman, I reflected to myself, for there was something peculiarly dissolute in his appearance, also one who has had to do with the sea, a diagnosis which proved very accurate.

“How do you do, Mr. Allan Quatermain, which I think my daughter said is your name, unless I dreamed it, for it is one that I seem to have heard before,” he exclaimed with a broad Scotch accent which I do not attempt to reproduce.  “What in the name of blazes brings you here where no real white man has been for years?  Well, I am glad enough to see you any way, for I am sick of half-breed Portuguese and niggers, and snuff-and-butter girls, and gin and bad whisky.  Leave your people to attend to those oxen and come in and have a drink.”

“Thank you, Mr. Robertson——­”

“Captain Robertson,” he interrupted.  “Man, don’t look astonished.  You mightn’t guess it, but I commanded a mail-steamer once and should like to hear myself called rightly again before I die.”

“I beg your pardon—­Captain Robertson, but myself, I don’t drink anything before sundown.  However, if you have something to eat——?”

“Oh yes, Inez—­she’s my daughter—­will find you a bite.  Those men of yours,” and he also looked doubtfully at Umslopogaas and his savage company, “will want food as well.  I’ll have a beast killed for them; they look as if they could eat it, horns and all.  Where are my people?  All asleep, I suppose, the lazy lubbers.  Wait a bit, I’ll wake them up.”

Going to the house he snatched a great sjambok cut from hippopotamus hide, from where it hung on a nail in the wall, and ran towards the group of huts which I have mentioned, roaring out the name Thomaso, also a string of oaths such as seamen use, mixed with others of a Portuguese variety.  What happened there I could not see because boughs were in the way, but presently I heard blows and screams, and caught sight of people, all dark-skinned, flying from the huts.