could make out great herds of grazing cattle and horses, mixed with wild
game, a fact that assured me of the truth of what I had heard during
my brief visit to Mur, that the Fung had few or no firearms, since
otherwise the buck and quagga would have kept at a distance. Far off,
too, and even on the horizon, I saw what appeared to be other towns and
villages. Evidently this was a very numerous people, and one which could
not justly be described as savage. No wonder that the little Abati tribe
feared them so intensely, notwithstanding the mighty precipices by which
they were protected from their hate.

About eleven o'clock Orme came on watch, and I turned in, having nothing
to report. Soon I was fast asleep, notwithstanding the anxieties that,
had I been less weary, might well have kept me wakeful. For these were
many. On the coming night we must slip through the Fung, and before
midday on the morrow we should either have entered Mur, or failed to
have entered Mur, which meant--death, or, what was worse, captivity
among barbarians, and subsequent execution, preceded probably by torture
of one sort or another.

Of course, however, we might come thither without accident, travelling
with good guides on a dark night, for, after all, the place was big, and
the road lonely and little used, so that unless we met a watch, which,
we were told, would not be there, our little caravan had a good chance
to pass unobserved. Shadrach seemed to think that we should do so, but
the worst of it was that, like Quick, I did not trust Shadrach. Even
Maqueda, the Lady of the Abati, she whom they called Child of Kings, had
her doubts about him, or so it had seemed to me.

At any rate, she had told me before I left Mur that she chose him for
this mission because he was bold and cunning, one of the very few of her