human
All of a sudden, I became conscious of a most sickening and overpowering stench. By that time it was almost dark--but not too dark to make out objects indistinctly--and the objects that caught my eye at that moment were sufficiently hideous and appalling. All around, the veldt was strewn with human corpses--swollen and decomposed, torn and mangled by wild animals, or ripped and hacked by the assegais of their slayers. They were natives, and of all ages and sexes, lying about in contorted attitudes, some heaped upon each other, the frightfully distorted countenances staring up at the sky. Pah! it was sickening, I tell you, coming upon this in the dusk. There seemed no end of them, and they were scattered as if cut down while fleeing. I learned afterwards it was the result of a Matabili raid. Well, this find accounted in a measure for the boldness of the wild dogs. They had been largely feeding on the human form divine, and had acquired a proportionate contempt for the same.
gpt
What an experience! said Sellon, whom this story, told amid the dark and savage surroundings of their fireless camp, considerably impressed.
human
You must have seen some uncommonly queer things in your time, Fanning?
gpt
Well, yes, I have. This is a land of strange experiences, although prosaic enough on the surface. I hope none will befall us before we get home again--always excepting the strange experience of finding ourselves rich men in the shape of what we are looking for.
human
By the way, whereabouts was it you were attacked that time? Anywhere near here?
gpt
About half an hour's ride further on. The poort narrows very much, and the cliffs are not nearly so high. It was just sundown, and I was jogging quietly along homewards very much down on my luck over the third failure, when bang came a shower of assegais and arrows and kerries, hurtling about the rocks like a young hailstorm. I spurred up then, you bet; but the ground is beastly rough, as you've seen, and the enemy could get along as fast as I could--besides, I had a brute of a pack-horse that wouldn't lead properly. They chased me down to where we first entered this defile, and by that time it was dark--luckily for me. As it was, I only shook them off by sacrificing the pack-horse.
human
Now, how the deuce did you manage that?
gpt
Why, I knew they'd reckon on me taking the shortest cut for the river. So when I got out of the poort at the bottom of the turret-head mountain--you remember that steep little slope where your horse turned a somersault--I put on pace a little so as to get a start. Then I stuck a burr under the pack-horse's tail and cast him loose. Away he went, slanting off into the other poort, which seems to lead towards the river, while I lay low. I could see the devils skipping down the poort on his heels, in high old glee. In the night I moved on again, striking due north, and after making nearly a week's cast--and nearly dying of hunger and thirst--I fetched up at the drift we came through day before yesterday. And, by the way, I think old Greenway was wrong in saying, `Beware the schelm Bushmen.' Those chaps struck me as more like Korannas. There were some quite big fellows among them.