Between Snow and Fire — page 224: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

é a a a d + r 4 a be _ 4 i j € . - * ¢ ’'? + _ swered Eustace, recognising the new arrival at once. “ —- > _ your people would not harm us. Are we not friends ?” | The Kafir shook his head. “Who can be called friends in war time?” he said. “ There are strangers in our midst—strangers from another land. Who can answer for them? I am Neandtku, the brother of Nteya. The chief will not have his friends harmed at the hands of strangers. But they must go, Look yonder, and lose notime. Get your horses and take the Inkostkazt, and leave at once, for the Ama Nggika have re- sponded to the call of their brethren and the Paramount Chief, and have risen to arms. 7%e land ts dead.” There was no need to follow the direction of the Kafir’s indication. A dull, red glare, some distance off, shone forth upon the night; then another and another. Signal fires ? No. These shone from no prominent height, but from the plain itself. Then Eustace took in the situation in a mo- ment. The savages were beginning to fire the deserted homesteads of the settlers. “Inspan the buggy quickly, Josane,” he said. “ And, Ncanduku, come inside for a moment. I will find dasela* for you and Nteya.” But the voice which had conveyed such timely warning responded not. The messenger had disappeared. -. The whole condition of affairs was patent to Eustace’s mind. Nteya, though a chief whose status was not far in- ferior to that of Sandili himself, was not all-powerful. Those of his tribesmen who came from a distance, and were not of his own clan, would be slow to give implicit obedi- ence to his “ word,” their instincts for slaughter and pillage once fairly let loose, and so he had sent to warn Eanswyth. Besides, it was probable that there were Gcalékas among them. Ncandutku’s words, “strangers from another land,” seemed to point that way. He put it to Josane while har- nessing the horses. ‘The old man emitted a dry laugh. “There are about six hundred of the Gcealéka fighting men in Nteya’s location to-night,” he replied. “ Every farmhouse in the land will be burned before the morning, Whau, Ixeshane! Is there any time to lose now?” Eustace realized that assuredly there was not. But in- spanning a pair of horses was, to his experienced hand, the work of a very few minutes indeed. * Best rendered by the familiar term ‘' backshish.” “ahs fe Li. EEN wi ‘OW Al [VD yo . RE . We2: EMME! OO)