My answer is, because of the extraordinary impression that it produced
upon me. Although so little was said, I felt all the while that those
few words were a veil hiding terrible events to be. I was sure that
some dreadful scheme had been hatched between the old dwarf and Mameena
whereof the issue would soon become apparent, and that he had sent me
away in a hurry after he learned that she had told me nothing, because
he feared lest I should stumble on its cue and perhaps cause it to fail.
At any rate, as I walked back to my wagons by moonlight down that
dreadful gorge, the hot, thick air seemed to me to have a physical taste
and smell of blood, and the dank foliage of the tropical trees that grew
there, when now and again a puff of wind stirred them, moaned like the
fabled imikovu, or as men might do in their last faint agony. The effect
upon my nerves was quite strange, for when at last I reached my wagons I
was shaking like a reed, and a cold perspiration, unnatural enough upon
that hot night, poured from my face and body.
Well, I took a couple of stiff tots of "squareface" to pull myself
together, and at length went to sleep, to awake before dawn with a
headache. Looking out of the wagon, to my surprise I saw Scowl and the
hunters, who should have been snoring, standing in a group and talking
to each other in frightened whispers. I called Scowl to me and asked
what was the matter.
"Nothing, Baas," he said with a shamefaced air; "only there are so many
spooks about this place. They have been passing in and out of it all
night."
"Spooks, you idiot!" I answered. "Probably they were people going to
visit the Nyanga, Zikali."
"Perhaps, Baas; only then we do not know why they should all look like
dead people--princes, some of them, by their dress--and walk upon the
air a man's height from the ground."
"Pooh!" I replied. "Do you not know the difference between owls in the
mist and dead kings? Make ready, for we trek at once; the air here is
full of fever."
"Certainly, Baas," he said, springing off to obey; and I do not think I
ever remember two wagons being got under way quicker than they were that
morning.
I merely mention this nonsense to show that the Black Kloof could affect
other people's nerves as well as my own.
In due course I reached Nodwengu without accident, having sent forward
one of my hunters to report my approach to Panda. When my wagons arrived
outside the Great Place they were met by none other than my old friend,
Maputa, he who had brought me back the pills before our attack upon
Bangu.