“Settled everything!” I repeated to myself with inward sarcasm as I lay down and shut my eyes. In truth, nothing at all was ever less settled, since success in such a desperate adventure depended upon a string of hypotheses long enough to reach from where we were to Capetown. Our case was an excellent example of the old proverb: If ifs and ands made pots and pans, There’d be no work for tinkers’ hands. _If_ the canoe came; _if_ it waited off the rock; _if_ Hans could swim out to it without being observed and get aboard; _if_ he could persuade those fetish-ridden Walloos to come to take us off; _if_ we could carry out our little game about the powder undetected; _if_ the powder went off all right and broke up the sluice-handle as per plan; _if_ we could free Sabeela from the post; _if_ she did not play the fool in some female fashion; _if_ blackguards of sorts did not manage to cut our throats during all these operations, and a score of other “ifs,” why, then our pots and pans would be satisfactorily manufactured and perhaps the priests of Heu-Heu would be satisfactorily frightened away or drowned. As it was, it looked to me as though, so far from not getting any rest that night, we should slumber more soundly than ever we did before—in the last long sleep of all. Well, it could not be helped, so I just fell back upon my favourite fatalism, said my prayers and went off to sleep, which, thank God, I can do at any time and under almost any circumstances. Had it not been for that gift I should have been dead long ago. When I woke up it was dark, and I found Dramana standing over me; indeed, it was her entry that roused me. I looked at my watch and discovered to my surprise that it was past ten o’clock at night. “Why did you not wake me before?” I said to Hans. “What was the use, Baas, seeing that there was nothing to be done and it is dull to be idle without a drop to drink?” That’s what he said, but the fact was that he had been fast asleep himself. Well, I was thankful, as thus we got rid of many weary hours of waiting. Suddenly I made up my mind to tell Dramana everything, and did so. There was something about this woman that made me trust her; also, obviously, she was mad with desire to escape from Dacha, whom she hated and who hated her and had determined to murder her as soon as he had obtained possession of Sabeela. She listened and stared at me, amazed at the boldness of my plans. “It may all end well,” she said, “though there is the magic of the priests to be feared which may tell them things that their eyes do not see.” “I will risk the magic,” I said.