He heard me with an impassive face, his grave eyes studying every line of me. I am bound to add that he made a hearty meal, and drank three cups of strong tea of my brewing. I gave him a cigar, one of a lot I had got from a Dutch farmer who was experimenting with their manufacture—and all the while I babbled of myself and my opinions. He must have thought me half-witted, and indeed before long I began to be of the same opinion myself. I told him that I meant to sleep the night here, and go back in the morning to Blaauwildebeestefontein, and then to Pietersdorp for stores. By-and-by I could see that he had ceased to pay any attention to what I said. I was clearly set down in his mind as a fool. Instead he kept looking at Colin, who was lying blinking in the doorway, one wary eye cocked on the stranger. “You have a fine dog,” he observed. “Yes,” I agreed, with one final effort of mendacity, “he’s fine to look at, but he has no grit in him. Any mongrel from a kraal can make him turn tail. Besides, he is a born fool and can’t find his way home. I’m thinking of getting rid of him.” Laputa rose and his eye fell on the dog’s back. I could see that he saw the lie of his coat, and that he did not agree with me. “The food was welcome, Baas,” he said. “If you will listen to me I can repay hospitality with advice. You are a stranger here. Trouble comes, and if you are wise you will go back to the Berg.” “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, with an air of cheerful idiocy. “But back to the Berg I go the first thing in the morning. I hate these stinking plains.” “It were wise to go to-night,” he said, with a touch of menace in his tone. “I can’t,” I said, and began to sing the chorus of a ridiculous music-hall song— “There’s no place like home—but I’m afraid to go home in the dark.” Laputa shrugged his shoulders, stepped over the bristling Colin, and went out. When I looked after him two minutes later he had disappeared. [1] The circlet into which, with the aid of gum, Zulu warriors weave their hair. CHAPTER IX THE STORE AT UMVELOS’ I sat down on a chair and laboured to collect my thoughts. Laputa had gone, and would return sooner or later with Henriques. If I was to remain alive till morning, both of them must be convinced that I was harmless. Laputa was probably of that opinion, but Henriques would recognize me, and I had no wish to have that yellow miscreant investigating my character. There was only one way out of it—I must be incapably drunk. There was not a drop of liquor in the store, but I found an old whisky bottle half full of methylated spirits. With this I thought I might raise an atmosphere of bad whisky, and for the rest I must trust to my meagre gifts as an actor.