Langley replied that he did not
quite know, but he thought the effect was largely due to the man's
teeth. But all the same he was "a very entertaining old buffer."
Next afternoon Langley was so impatient to resume conversation with his
new friend that he repaired to the ant-heap quite half an hour before
the appointed time. He had not, however, long to wait, as Ghamba soon
appeared, emerging from a donga a couple of hundred yards away.
Langley was more impressed than ever. Ghamba told him all about the
Basutos, among whom he had lived; about the old days in Natal, before
even the Dutch occupation, when Tshaka's impis wiped whole tribes out of
existence; of the recent wars in Zululand and the Cape Colony, and as
to the probability of future disturbances. Charmed as was Langley by the
old man's conversation, he felt that on this occasion there was a little
too much of it; that Ghamba was not nearly so good a listener as he had
been on the previous day; so when the latter at length put a question
to him, thus affording an opportunity for the exercise of his own pentup
loquacity, Langley felt elated, more especially as several inquiries
were grouped together in the one asking.
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