gave us food, sometimes, with fear and respect, as though we had been
distracted by the visitation of God; but some did not understand our
language, and some cursed us, or, yawning, asked with contempt the
reason of our quest. Once, as we were going away, an old man called
after us, 'Desist!'

"We went on. Concealing our weapons, we stood humbly aside before the
horsemen on the road; we bowed low in the courtyards of chiefs who were
no better than slaves. We lost ourselves in the fields, in the jungle;
and one night, in a tangled forest, we came upon a place where crumbling
old walls had fallen amongst the trees, and where strange stone
idols--carved images of devils with many arms and legs, with snakes
twined round their bodies, with twenty heads and holding a hundred
swords--seemed to live and threaten in the light of our camp fire.
Nothing dismayed us. And on the road, by every fire, in resting-places,
we always talked of her and of him. Their time was near. We spoke
of nothing else. No! not of hunger, thirst, weariness, and faltering
hearts. No! we spoke of him and her! Of her! And we thought of them--of
her! Matara brooded by the fire. I sat and thought and thought, till
suddenly I could see again the image of a woman, beautiful, and young,
and great and proud, and tender, going away from her land and her
people. Matara said, 'When we find them we shall kill her first to
cleanse the dishonour--then the man must die.' I would say, 'It shall
be so; it is your vengeance.' He stared long at me with his big sunken
eyes.

"We came back to the coast. Our feet were bleeding, our bodies thin. We
slept in rags under the shadow of stone enclosures; we prowled, soiled
and lean, about the gateways of white men's courtyards. Their hairy dogs
barked at us, and their servants shouted from afar, 'Begone!' Low-born