If ever you want help or shelter, remember that Maiwa has a good
memory for friend and foe. All I have is yours.
"And so I thanked her and went. She was certainly a very remarkable
woman. A year or two ago I heard that her father Nala was dead, and that
she had succeeded to the chieftainship of both tribes, which she ruled
with great justice and firmness.
"I can assure you that we ascended the pass leading to Wambe's town with
feelings very different from those with which we had descended it a
few days before. But if I was grateful for the issue of events, you can
easily imagine what poor Every's feelings were. When we got to the top
of the pass, before the whole impi he actually flopped down upon his
knees and thanked Heaven for his escape, the tears running down his
face. But then, as I have said, his nerves were shaken--though now that
his beard was trimmed and he had some sort of clothes on his back, and
hope in his heart, he looked a very different man from the poor wretch
whom we had rescued from death by torture.
"Well, we separated from Nala at the little stairway or pass over the
mountain--Every and I and the ivory going down the river which I had
come up a few weeks before, and the chief returning to his own kraal on
the further side of the mountain. He gave us an escort of a hundred
and fifty men, however, with instructions to accompany us for six days'
journey, and to keep the Matuku bearers in order and then return.
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