"I do, Mr. Meyer, and I thank you, too; it was brave of you to come out to save us. Father," she called, "come and tell Mr. Meyer how grateful we are to him."
Mr. Clifford hobbled out from his hut under the tree, saying: "I have told him already, dear."
"Yes," answered Jacob, "you have told me; why repeat yourself? I see that supper is ready. Let us eat, for you must be hungry; afterwards I have something to tell you."
So they ate, with no great appetite, any of them--indeed Meyer touched but little food, though he drank a good deal, first of strong black coffee and afterwards of squareface and water. But on Benita he pressed the choicest morsels that he could find, eyeing her all the while, and saying that she must take plenty of nutriment or her beauty would suffer and her strength wane. Benita bethought her of the fairy tales of her childhood, in which the ogre fed up the princess whom he purposed to devour.
"You should think of your own strength, Mr. Meyer," she said; "you cannot live on coffee and squareface."
"It is all I need to-night. I am astonishingly well since you came back. I can never remember feeling so well, or so strong. I can do the work of three men, and not be tired; all this afternoon, for instance, I have been carrying provisions and other things up that steep wall, for we must prepare for a long siege together; yet I should never know that I had lifted a single basket. But while you were away--ah! then I felt tired."
Benita changed the subject, asking him if he had made any discoveries.
"Not yet, but now that you are back the discoveries will soon come. Do not be afraid; I have my plan which cannot fail. Also, it was lonely working in that cave without you, so I only looked about a little outside till it was time to go to meet you, and shoot some of those Matabele. Do you know?--I killed seven of them myself. When I was shooting for your sake I could not miss," and he smiled at her.
Benita shrank from him visibly, and Mr. Clifford said in an angry voice: "Don't talk of those horrors before my daughter. It is bad enough to have to do such things, without speaking about them afterwards."
"You are right," he replied reflectively; "and I apologise, though personally I never enjoyed anything so much as shooting those Matabele. Well, they are gone, and there are plenty more outside. Listen! They are singing their evening hymn," and with his long finger he beat time to the volleying notes of the dreadful Matabele war-chant, which floated up from the plain below. "It sounds quite religious, doesn't it? only the words--no, I will not translate them. In our circumstances they are too personal.