“Vow of fiddlestick!” I cried. “Who do you think is the bigger chief, the Inkulu or Ratitswan? I tell you Ratitswan is now driving Inkulu before him as a wind drives rotten leaves. It will be well for you, men of Machudi, to make peace with Ratitswan and take me to him on the Berg. If you bring me to him, I and he will reward you; but if you do Inkulu’s bidding you will soon be hunted like buck out of your hills.” They grinned at one another, but I could see that my words had no effect. Laputa had done his business too well. The spokesman shrugged his shoulders in the way the Kaffirs have. “We wish you no ill, Baas, but we have been bidden to take you to Inkulu. We cannot disobey the command of the Snake.” My weakness was coming on me again, and I could talk no more. I sat down plump on the ground, almost falling into the pool. “Take me to Inkulu,” I stammered with a dry throat, “I do not fear him;” and I rolled half-fainting on my back. These clansmen of Machudi were decent fellows. One of them had some Kaffir beer in a calabash, which he gave me to drink. The stuff was thin and sickly, but the fermentation in it did me good. I had the sense to remember my need of sleep. “The day is young,” I said, “and I have come far. I ask to be allowed to sleep for an hour.” The men made no difficulty, and with my head between Colin’s paws I slipped into dreamless slumber. When they wakened me the sun was beginning to climb the sky, I judged it to be about eight o’clock. They had made a little fire and roasted mealies. Some of the food they gave me, and I ate it thankfully. I was feeling better, and I think a pipe would have almost completed my cure. But when I stood up I found that I was worse than I had thought. The truth is, I was leg-weary, which you often see in horses, but rarely in men. What the proper explanation is I do not know, but the muscles simply refuse to answer the direction of the will. I found my legs sprawling like a child’s who is learning to walk. “If you want me to go to the Inkulu, you must carry me,” I said, as I dropped once more on the ground. The men nodded, and set to work to make a kind of litter out of their knobkerries and some old ropes they carried. As they worked and chattered I looked idly at the left bank of the ravine—that is, the left as you ascend it. Some of Machudi’s men had come down there, and, though the place looked sheer and perilous, I saw how they had managed it. I followed out bit by bit the track upwards, not with any thought of escape, but merely to keep my mind under control. The right road was from the foot of the pool up a long shelf to a clump of juniper. Then there was an easy chimney; then a piece of good hand-and-foot climbing; and last, another ledge which led by an easy gradient to the top. I figured all this out as I have heard a condemned man will count the windows of the houses on his way to the scaffold.