Page:SheAndAllan.pdf/72

62 My name is Inez Robertson, she answered. I will go to wake my father. Meanwhile please unyoke your oxen. They can feed with the others; they look as though they wanted rest, poor things. Then she turned and went into the house.

Inez Robertson, I said to myself, that's a queer combination. English father and Portuguese mother, I suppose. But what can an Englishman be doing in a place like this? If it had been a trek-Boer I should not have been surprised. Then I began to give directions about outspanning.

We had just got the oxen out of the yokes, when a big, raw-boned, red-bearded, blue-eyed, roughly-clad man of about fifty years of age appeared from the house, yawning. I threw my eye over him as he advanced with a peculiar rolling gait, and formed certain conclusions. A drunkard who has once been a gentleman, I reflected to myself, for there was something peculiarly dissolute in his appearance, also one who has had to do with the sea, a diagnosis which proved very accurate.

How do you do, Mr. Allan Quatermain, which I think my daughter said is your name, unless I dreamed it, for it is one that I seem to have heard before, he exclaimed with a broad Scotch accent which I do not attempt to reproduce. What in the name of blazes brings you here where no real white man has been for years? Well, I am glad enough to see you any way, for I am sick of half-breed Portuguese and niggers, and snuff-and-butter girls, and gin and bad whisky. Leave your people to attend to those oxen and come in and have a drink.

Thank you, Mr. Robertson—

Captain Robertson, he interrupted. Man, don't look astonished. You mightn't guess it, but I commanded a mail-steamer once and should like to hear myself called rightly again before I die.

I beg your pardon—Captain Robertson, but myself, I don't drink anything before sundown. However, if you have something to eat—?

Oh yes, Inez—she's my daughter—will find you a bite. Those men of yours, and he also looked doubtfully at Umslopogaas and his savage company, will want food as well. I'll have a beast killed for them; they look as if they could eat it, horns and all. Where are my people? All asleep, I