"
"Well," I replied, with the kind of joke one perpetrates under such
circumstances, "we shall have plenty of blue devils without making any
more."
Truly ours was a dreadful situation. Let the reader imagine it. Within
a little more than forty-eight hours we were to be shot to death with
arrows if an erratic old gentleman who, for aught I knew might be
dead, did not turn up at what was then one of the remotest and most
inaccessible spots in Central Africa. Moreover, our only hope that
such a thing would happen, if hope it could be called, was the
prophecy of a Kaffir witch-doctor.
To rely on this in any way was so absurd that I gave up thinking of it
and set my mind to considering if there were any possible means of
escape. After hours of reflection I could find none. Even Hans, with
all his experience and nearly superhuman cunning, could suggest none.
We were unarmed and surrounded by thousands of savages, all of whom
save perhaps Babemba, believed us to be slave-traders, a race that
very properly they held in abhorrence, who had visited the country
with the object of stealing their women and children.
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