We had saved the life of the little maid, and taught the Masai of those parts a lesson that they will not forget for ten years -- but at what a cost! Painfully we made our way up the hill which, just a little more than an hour before, we had descended under such different circumstances.
At the gate of the wall stood Mrs Mackenzie waiting for us.
When her eyes fell upon us, however, she shrieked out, and covered her face with her hands, crying, 'Horrible, horrible!' Nor were her fears allayed when she discovered her worthy husband being borne upon an improvized stretcher; but her doubts as to the nature of his injury were soon set at rest.

Then when in a few brief words I had told her the upshot of the struggle (of which Flossie, who had arrived in safety, had been able to explain something) she came up to me and solemnly kissed me on the forehead.
'God bless you all, Mr Quatermain; you have saved my child's life,' she said simply.
Then we went in and got our clothes off and doctored our wounds; I am glad to say I had none, and Sir Henry's and Good's were, thanks to those invaluable chain shirts, of a comparatively harmless nature, and to be dealt with by means of a few stitches and sticking- plaster.

Mackenzie's, however, were serious, though fortunately the spear had not severed any large artery.

After that we had a bath, and what a luxury it was! And having clad ourselves in ordinary clothes, proceeded to the dining-room, where breakfast was set as usual.

It was curious sitting down there, drinking tea and eating toast in an ordinary nineteenth-century sort of way just as though we had not employed the early hours in a regular primitive hand-to-hand Middle-Ages kind of struggle.