Part 5 (2/2)
”N-no. At least, I don't mean that--in fact, I don't know what I do mean,” broke off Nidia, with a perfectly disarming frankness.
”Do you know Bulawayo at all?”
The diversion came from the third of the trio.
”Oh yes; I have just come from up that way.”
”Really. I wonder if you ever met my husband. He is a mining engineer.
Bateman our name is.”
John Ames thought.
”The name doesn't seem altogether unknown to me,” he said. ”The fact is I am very seldom in Bulawayo. My district lies away out in the wilds, and very wild indeed it is.”
”What sort of a place is Bulawayo?”
”Oh, a creditable towns.h.i.+p enough, considering that barely three years ago it was a vast savage kraal, and, barring a few traders, there wasn't a white man in the country.”
”But isn't it full of savages now?” struck in Nidia.
”Yes; there are a good few--not right around Bulawayo, though. Are you likely to be going up there?”
”We are, a little later,” replied Mrs Bateman. ”This is fortunate.
You will be able to tell us all about it.”
”With pleasure. I shall be too happy to give you any information I can.”
”Is it safe up there?” said Nidia. ”Is there no fear of those dreadful savages rising some night and killing us all?”
Unconsciously the official reserve came over John Ames. He had more than once predicted to himself and one or two confidential friends such a contingency as by no means outside the bounds of practical politics, almost invariably to be laughed at for his pains. Now he replied:
”Everything that precaution can do is against it. They are carefully supervised; in fact, it is my own particular business to supervise a considerable section of them.”
”Really? But how do you talk, to them? Can they talk English?”
John Ames smiled. ”You forget I mentioned that I was raised in Natal.”
”Of course. How stupid I am!” declared Nidia. ”And so you know their language and have to look after them? Isn't it very exciting?”
”No; deplorably prosaic. There are points of interest about the work, though.”
”And you keep them in order, and know all that's going on?”
”We try to; and I think on the whole we succeed fairly well.”
But at that very moment s.h.i.+minya the sorcerer was dooming to death two persons, and filling with seditious venom the minds of three chiefs of importance within the speaker's district.
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