I was afraid, and not of our present dangers, though these were real enough, so real that in a few hours we might all be dead.
To dangers I was accustomed; for years they had been my daily food by day and by night, and, as I think I have said elsewhere, I am a fatalist, one who knows full well that when God wants me He will take me; that is if He can want such a poor, erring creature.

Nothing that I did or left undone could postpone or hasten His summons for a moment, though of course I knew it to be my duty to fight against death and to avoid it for as long as I might, because that I should do so was a portion of His plan.
For we are all part of a great pattern, and the continuance or cessation of our lives re-acts upon other lives, and therefore life is a trust.
No, it was of greater things that I felt afraid, things terrible and imminent which I could not grasp and much less understand.

I understand them now, but who would have guessed that on the issue of that whispered colloquy in the cart behind me, depended the fate of a people and many thousands of lives?
As I was to learn in days to come, if Anscombe and Heda had determined upon heading for the Transvaal, there would, as I believe, have been no Zulu war, which in its turn meant that there would have been no Boer Rebellion and that the mysterious course of history would have been changed.
I shook myself together and returned to the cart.
"Well," I whispered, but there was no answer.

A moment later there came another flash of lightning.
"There," said Heda, "how many do you make it?
"Ninety-eight," he answered.
"I counted ninety-nine," she said, "but anyway it was within the hundred.

Mr.Quatermain, we will go to Zululand, if you please, if you will show us the way there." "Right," I answered, "but might I ask what that has to do with your both counting a hundred ?" "Only this," she said, "we could not make up our minds.