“Yes, Baas, we ought to have killed her too, for nothing else would have kept her quiet,” replied Hans in cheerful assent.  “Now we shall have to pay for our mistake, for the hunt must go on.”

At this moment we stumbled across Robertson and Umslopogaas who, with the others, and every living thing within a mile or two had also heard Janee’s yell, and briefly told our story.  When he learned how near we had been to rescuing his daughter, Robertson groaned, but Umslopogaas only said,

“Well, there are two less of the men-eaters left to deal with.  Still, for once your wisdom failed you, Macumazahn.  When you had found the camp you should have returned, so that we might all attack it together.  Had we done so, before the dawn there would not have been one of them left.”

“Yes,” I answered, “I think that my wisdom did fail me, if I have any to fail.  But come; perhaps we may catch them yet.”

So we advanced, Hans and I showing the road.  But when we reached the place it was too late, for all that remained of the Amahagger, or of Inez and Janee, were the two dead men whom we had killed, and in that darkness pursuit was impossible.  So we went back to our own camp to rest and await the dawn before taking up the trail, only to find ourselves confronted with a new trouble.  All the Strathmuir half-breeds whom we had left behind as useless, had taken advantage of our absence and that of the Zulus, to desert.  They had just bolted back upon our tracks and vanished into the sea of bush.  What became of them I do not know, as we never saw them again, but my belief is that these cowardly fellows all perished, for certainly not one of them reached Strathmuir.

Fortunately for us, however, they departed in such a hurry that they left all their loads behind them, and even some of the guns they carried.  Evidently Janee’s yell was the last straw which broke the back of such nerve as remained to them.  Doubtless they believed it to be the signal of attack by hordes of cannibals.

As there was nothing to said or done, since any pursuit of these curs was out of the question, we made the best of things as they were.  It proved a simple business.  From the loads we selected such articles as were essential, ammunition for the most part, to carry ourselves—­and the rest we abandoned, hiding it under a pile of stones in case we should ever come that way again.

The guns they had thrown aside we distributed among the Zulus who had none, though the thought that they possessed them, so far as I was concerned, added another terror to life.  The prospect of going into battle with those wild axemen letting off bullets in every direction was not pleasant, but fortunately when that crisis came, they cast them away and reverted to the weapons to which they were accustomed.

Now all this sounds much like a tale of disaster, or at any rate of failure.  It is, however, wonderful by what strange ways good results are brought about, so much so that at times I think that these seeming accidents must be arranged by an Intelligence superior to our own, to fulfil through us purposes of which we know nothing, and frequently, be it admitted, of a nature sufficiently obscure.  Of course this is a fatalistic doctrine, but then, as I have said before, within certain limits I am a fatalist.