“Well, that’s my story,” I said. “I don’t know what the rising is about, but there’s one other thing I can tell you. There’s some kind of sacred place for the Kaffirs, and I’ve found out where it is.” I gave him a short account of my adventures in the Rooirand. He smoked silently for a bit after I had finished. “You’ve got the skeleton of the whole thing right, and you only want the filling up. And you found out everything for yourself? Colles was right; you’re not wanting in intelligence, Mr Crawfurd.” It was not much of a compliment, but I have never been more pleased in my life. This slim, grizzled man, with his wrinkled face and bright eyes, was clearly not lavish in his praise. I felt it was no small thing to have earned a word of commendation. “And now I will tell you my story,” said Captain Arcoll. “It is a long story, and I must begin far back. It has taken me years to decipher it, and, remember, I’ve been all my life at this native business. I can talk every dialect, and I have the customs of every tribe by heart. I’ve travelled over every mile of South Africa, and Central and East Africa too. I was in both the Matabele wars, and I’ve seen a heap of other fighting which never got into the papers. So what I tell you you can take as gospel, for it is knowledge that was not learned in a day.” He puffed away, and then asked suddenly, “Did you ever hear of Prester John?” “The man that lived in Central Asia?” I asked, with a reminiscence of a story-book I had as a boy. “No, no,” said Mr Wardlaw, “he means the King of Abyssinia in the fifteenth century. I’ve been reading all about him. He was a Christian, and the Portuguese sent expedition after expedition to find him, but they never got there. Albuquerque wanted to make an alliance with him and capture the Holy Sepulchre.” Arcoll nodded. “That’s the one I mean. There’s not very much known about him, except Portuguese legends. He was a sort of Christian, but I expect that his practices were as pagan as his neighbours’. There is no doubt that he was a great conqueror. Under him and his successors, the empire of Ethiopia extended far south of Abyssinia away down to the Great Lakes.” “How long did this power last?” I asked wondering to what tale this was prologue. “That’s a mystery no scholar has ever been able to fathom. Anyhow, the centre of authority began to shift southward, and the warrior tribes moved in that direction. At the end of the sixteenth century the chief native power was round about the Zambesi. The Mazimba and the Makaranga had come down from the Lake Nyassa quarter, and there was a strong kingdom in Manicaland. That was the Monomotapa that the Portuguese thought so much of.” Wardlaw nodded eagerly. The story was getting into ground that he knew about.