You're sure to get on the track of something. Good–bye, my boy,' and he waved a fat hand to me.

That night I embarked on a cargo–boat which was going round the coast to Delagoa Bay. It is a small world—at least for us far–wandering Scots. For who should I find when I got on board but my old friend Tam Dyke, who was second mate on the vessel? We wrung each other's hands, and I answered, as best I could, his questions about Kirkcaple. I had supper with him in the cabin, and went on deck to see the moorings cast.

Suddenly there was a bustle on the quay, and a big man with a handbag forced his way up the gangway. The men who were getting ready to cast off tried to stop him, but he elbowed his way forward, declaring he must see the captain. Tam went up to him and asked civilly if he had a passage taken. He admitted he had not, but said he would make it right in two minutes with the captain himself. The Rev. John Laputa, for some reason of his own, was leaving Durban with more haste than he had entered it.

I do not know what passed with the captain, but the minister got his passage right enough, and Tam was even turned out of his cabin to make room for him. This annoyed my friend intensely.

'That black brute must be made of money, for he paid through the nose for this, or I'm a Dutchman. My old man doesn't take to his black brethren any more than I do. Hang it all, what are we coming to, when we're turning into a blooming cargo boat for niggers?'

I had all too little of Tam's good company, for on the afternoon of the second day we reached the little town of Lourenco Marques. This was my final landing in Africa, and I mind how eagerly I looked at the low, green shores and the bush–covered slopes of the mainland. We were landed from boats while the ship lay out in the bay, and Tam came ashore with me to spend the evening. By this time I had lost every remnant of homesickness. I had got a job before me which promised better things than colleging at Edinburgh, and I was as keen to get up country now as I had been loth to leave England. My mind being full of mysteries, I scanned every Portuguese loafer on the quay as if he had been a spy, and when Tam and I had had a bottle of Collates in a cafe I felt that at last I had got to foreign parts and a new world.

Tam took me to supper with a friend of his, a Scot by the name of Aitken, who was landing–agent for some big mining house on the Rand. He hailed from Fife and gave me a hearty welcome, for he had heard my father preach in his young days. Aitken was a strong, broad–shouldered fellow who had been a sergeant in the Gordons, and during the war he had done secret–service work in Delagoa. He had hunted, too, and traded up and down Mozambique, and knew every dialect of the Kaffirs. He asked me where I was bound for, and when I told him there was the same look in his eyes as I had seen with the Durban manager.

'You're going to a rum place, Mr Crawfurd,' he said.

'So I'm told. Do you know anything about it? You're not the first who has looked queer when I've spoken the name.'

'I've never been there,' he said, 'though I've been pretty near it from the Portuguese side. That's the funny thing about Blaauwildebeestefontein. Everybody has heard of it, and nobody knows it.'

'I wish you would tell me what you have heard.'

'Well, the natives are queer up thereaways. There's some kind of a holy place which every Kaffir from Algoa Bay to the Zambesi and away beyond knows about. When I've been hunting in the bush–veld I've often met strings of Kaffirs from hundreds of miles distant, and they've all been going or coming from Blaauwildebeestefontein. It's like Mecca to the Mohammedans, a place they go to on pilgrimage. I've heard of an old man up there who is believed to be two hundred years old. Anyway, there's some sort of great witch or wizard living in the mountains.'

Aitken smoked in silence for a time; then he said, 'I'll tell you another thing. I believe there's a diamond mine.