You felt nothing in the
spiritual line?"
"I felt nothing except a chill," I answered, for I was tired and
hungry. "What the devil are you driving at?"
"Have you got that flask of Hollands about you, Quatermain?"
"Oh! those are the spirits you are referring to," I remarked with
sarcasm as I handed it to him.
He took a good pull and replied--
"Not at all, except in the sense that bad spirits require good
spirits to correct them, as the Bible teaches. To come to
facts," he added in a changed voice, "I have never been in a
place that depressed me more than that thrice accursed patch of
bush."
"Why did it depress you?" I asked, studying him as well as I
could in the fading light. To tell the truth I feared lest he
had knocked his head when the wildebeeste upset him, and was
suffering from delayed concussion.
"Can't tell you, Quatermain. I don't look like a criminal, do I?
Well, I entered those trees feeling a fairly honest man, and I
came out of them feeling like a murderer. It was as though
something terrible had happened to me there; it was as though I
had killed someone there. Ugh!" and he shivered and took another
pull at the Hollands.
"What bosh!" I said. "Besides, even if it were to come true, I
am sorry to say I've killed lots of men in the way of business
and they don't bother me overmuch."
"Did you ever kill one to win a woman?"
"Certainly not. Why, that would be murder. How can you ask me
such a thing? But I have killed several to win cattle," I
reflected aloud, remembering my expedition with Saduko against
the chief Bangu, and some other incidents in my career.
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