Part 3 (2/2)

Here he reht a man with a white beard, whom he understood to be a ”medicine-man”, came and inspected hih the thorn forest to the confines of the wilderness, and given food and this sword (at least so he said), and turned loose'

'Well,' said Sir Henry, who had been listening with breathless interest, 'and what did he do then?'

'Oh! he sees and hardshi+ps innumerable, and to have lived for weeks on roots and berries, and such things as he could catch and kill But sorees made his way south and reached this place What the details of his journey were I never learnt, for I told hi one of ht The headman took him away, but the poor man had the itch so badly that the head it, so he was given a blanket and told to sleep outside

As it happened, we had a lion hanging about here just then, and most unhappily he winded this unfortunate wanderer, and, springing on him, bit his head al about it, and there was an end of him and his story about the white people; and whether or no there is any truth in it is more than I can tell you What do you think, Mr Quatermain?'

I shook my head, and answered, 'I don't know There are so reat continent that I should be sorry to assert that there was no truth in it Anyhoe mean to try and find out We intend to journey to Lekakisera, and thence, if we live to get so far, to this Lake Laga; and, if there are any white people beyond, ill do our best to find them'

'You are very venturesome people,' said Mr Mackenzie, with a smile, and the subject dropped

CHAPTER IV ALPHONSE AND HIS ANNETTE

After dinner we thoroughly inspected all the outbuildings and grounds of the station, which I consider the most successful as well as the most beautiful place of the sort that I have seen in Africa We then returned to the veranda, where we found Ue of this favourable opportunity to clean all the rifles thoroughly This was the only _work_ that he ever did or was asked to do, for as a Zulu chief it was beneath his dignity to ith his hands; but such as it was he did it very well It was a curious sight to see the great Zulu sitting there upon the floor, his battleaxe resting against the wall behind hi hands were busily e the un One--a double four-bore belonging to Sir Henry--was the Thunderer; another, my 500 Express, which had a peculiarly sharp report, was 'the little one who spoke like a whip'; the Winchester repeaters were 'the women, who talked so fast that you could not tell one word from another'; the six Martinis were 'the common people'; and so on with theun as he cleaned it, as though it were an individual, and in a vein of the quaintest humour He did the same with his battle-axe, which he seemed to look upon as an intimate friend, and to which he would at ti over all his old adventures with it--and dreadful enough sorim humour, he had named this axe 'Inkosi-kaas', which is the Zulu word for chieftainess For a long while I could not ave it such a name, and at last I asked him, when he informed me that the axe was very evidently fe very deep into things, and that she was clearly a chieftainess because all ht of her beauty and power In the same way he would consult 'Inkosi-kaas' if in any dilemma; and when I asked him why he did so, he infor 'looked into so many people's brains'

I took up the axe and closely examined this formidable weapon It was, as I have said, of the nature of a pole-axe The haft, made out of an enor, about an inch and a quarter thick, and with a knob at the end as large as a Maltese orange, left there to prevent the hand froh so massive, was as flexible as cane, and practically unbreakable; but, to make assurance doubly sure, it hipped round at intervals of a few inches with copper wire--all the parts where the hands grip being thus treated Just above where the haft entered the head were scored a nu a man killed in battle with the weapon The axe itself was made of the most beautiful steel, and apparently of European aas did not knohere it ca taken it from the hand of a chief he had killed in battletwo and a half pounds, as nearly as I could judge The cutting part was slightly concave in shape--not convex, as it generally the case with savage battleaxes--and sharp as a razor,five and three-quarter inches across the widest part Fro, for the last two of which it was hollow, and shaped like a leather punch, with an opening for anything forced into the hollow at the punch end to be pushed out above--in fact, in this respect it exactly resembled a butcher's pole-axe It ith this punch end, as we afterwards discovered, that U a neat round hole in his adversary's skull, and only using the broad cutting edge for a circular sweep, or sometimes in a melee I think he considered the punch a neater andat his eneot his name of 'Woodpecker'

Certainly in his hands it was a terribly efficient one

Such was Uaas' axe, Inkosi-kaas, the most remarkable and fatal hand-to-hand weapon that I ever saw, and one which he cherished as much as his own life It scarcely ever left his hand except when he was eating, and then he always sat with it under his leg

Just as I returned his axe to Uaas, Miss Flossie came up and took me off to see her collection of flowers, African liliu shrubs, so quite unknown to me and also, I believe, to botanical science I asked her if she had ever seen or heard of the 'Goya' lily, which Central African explorers have told me they have occasionally met with and whose wonderful loveliness has filled them with astonishment This lily, which the natives say blooms only once in ten years, flourishes in the most arid soil Coenerally weighing about four pounds As for the flower itself (which I afterwards saw under circumstances likely to impress its appearance fixedly in my mind), I know not how to describe its beauty and splendour, or the indescribable sweetness of its perfume The flower--for it has only one bloom--rises from the crown of the bulb on a thick fleshy and flat-sided stem, the specimen that I saw measured fourteen inches in diameter, and is soiflorureen sheath, which in its early stage is not unlike that of a water-lily, but which as the blooracefully towards the ste arch of white enclosing another cup of richest velvety criolden-coloured pistil I have never seen anything to equal this bloorance, and as I believe it is but little known, I take the liberty to describe it at length Looking at it for the first time I well remember that I realized how even in a flower there dwells soht Miss Flossie told row it in her garden, but without success, adding, however, that as it should be in blooht that she could procureher if she was not lonely up here ae people and without any coe

'Lonely?' she said 'Oh, indeed no! I a, and besides I have my own companions Why, I should hate to be buried in a crowd of white girls all just like myself so that nobody could tell the difference! Here,' she said, giving her head a little toss, 'I am I; and every native for miles around knows the ”Water-lily”,--for that is what they call me--and is ready to do what I want, but in the books that I have read about little girls in England it is not like that Everybody thinks them a trouble, and they have to do what their schoole like that and not to be free--free as the air'

'Would you not like to learn?' I asked

'So I do learn Father teaches me Latin and French and arith all these wild men?'

'Afraid? Oh no! they never interfere with ai” (of the Divinity) because I am so white and have fair hair

And look here,' and diving her little hand into the bodice of her dress she produced a double-barrelled nickel-plated Derringer, 'I always carry that loaded, and if anybody tried to touch me I should shoot him Once I shot a leopard that juhtened me very much, but I shot it in the ear and it fell dead, and I have its skin uponto some far-away object, 'I said just now that I had companions; there is one of them'

I looked, and for the first tilory of Mount Kenia Hitherto the mountain had always been hidden in mist, but now its radiant beauty was unveiled for h the base was still wrapped in vapour so that the lofty peak or pillar, towering nearly twenty thousand feet into the sky, appeared to be a fairy vision, hanging between earth and heaven, and based upon the clouds The soleether beyond the power of littering white glory, its crest piercing the very blue of heaven As I gazed at it with that little girl I felt my whole heart lifted up with an indescribable ehts see sun were breaking upon Kenia's snows Mr Mackenzie's natives call the er of God', and to h calm that surely lies above this fevered world So of beauty is a joy for ever,

and now it cahly understood what it meant Base, indeed, would be the hty snoreathed pile--that white old tonificance, and, by whatever nahts are like visions of the spirit; they throide the s of the chamber of our small selfishness and let in a breath of that air that rushes round the rolling spheres, and for a while illuht which beats upon the Throne

Yes, such things of beauty are indeed a joy for ever, and I can well understand what little Flossie aas, savage old Zulu that he was, said when I pointed out to hiht look thereon for a thousand years and yet be hungry to see' But he gave rather another colour to his poetical idea when he added in a sort of chant, and with a touch of that weird iination for which the man was remarkable, that when he was dead he should like his spirit to sit upon that snow-clad peak for ever, and to rush down the steep white sides in the breath of the ind, or on the flash of the lightning, and 'slay, and slay, and slay'