“Will you help me if I do, to the end, good or ill, Quatermain?” he added.

I nodded.

“That’s as much as another’s oath,” he muttered.  “Still, I will put my thought in words.  I swear by God, by my mother—­like these natives—­and by my daughter born in honest marriage, that I will never touch another drop of strong drink, until I have avenged those poor women and their little children, and rescued Inez from their murderers.  If I do you may put a bullet through me.”

“That’s all right,” I said in an offhand fashion, though inwardly I glowed with pride at the success of my great idea, for at the time I thought it great, and went on,

“Now let us get to business.  The first thing to do is to trek to Strathmuir and make preparations; the next to start upon the trail.  Come to sit on the waggon with me and tell me what guns and ammunition you have got, for according to Hans those savages don’t seem to have touched anything, except a few blankets and a herd of goats.”

He did as I asked, telling me all he could remember.  Then he said,

“It is a strange thing, but now I recall that about two years ago a great savage with a high nose, who talked a sort of Arabic which, like Inez, I understand, having lived on the coast, turned up one day and said he wanted to trade.  I asked him what in, and he answered that he would like to buy some children.  I told him that I was not a slave-dealer.  Then he looked at Inez, who was moving about, and said that he would like to buy her to be a wife for his Chief, and offered some fabulous sum in ivory and in gold, which he said should be paid before she was taken away.  I snatched his big spear from his hand, broke it over his head and gave him the best hiding with its shaft that he had ever heard of.  Then I kicked him off the place.  He limped away but when he was out of reach, turned and called out that one day he would come again with others and take her, meaning Inez, without leaving the price in ivory and gold.  I ran for my gun, but when I got back he had gone and I never thought of the matter again from that day to this.”

“Well, he kept his promise,” I said, but Robertson made no answer, for by this time that thundering dose of bromide and laudanum had taken effect on him and he had fallen asleep, of which I was glad, for I thought that this sleep would save his sanity, as I believe it did for a while.

We reached Strathmuir towards sunset, too late to think of attempting the pursuit that day.  Indeed, during our trek, I had thought the matter out carefully and come to the conclusion that to try to do so would be useless.  We must rest and make preparations; also there was no hope of our overtaking these brutes who already had a clear twelve hours’ start, by a sudden spurt.  They must be run down patiently by following their spoor, if indeed they could be run down at all before they vanished into the vast recesses of unknown Africa.  The most we could do this night was to get ready.