"It is all very strange," Nita said, "and very unaccountable."
"Everyone on the frontier knows that sooner or later we shall have to deal with the Afridis, and that it will be an enormously difficult and expensive business, and will cost an immense amount of life."
"Don't let us talk about it any more; it makes me out of all patience to think of such folly."
The journey was resumed the next morning, and continued day after day and week after week. Sometimes they were obliged to turn quite out of their direct course, and they had to run considerable risks to get fresh supplies for themselves and forage for the pony. Both were obtained by entering villages at night, and filling their sack from stacks of grain and forage. The grain they pounded between flat stones as they sat by their fire, and so made a coarse meal which they generally boiled into a sort of porridge, their sauce-pans being gourds cut in the fields. Meat they had no difficulty about, as Carter managed, when necessary, to kill a bullock and take sufficient meat for ten days' supply.
They seldom caught sight of a villager when travelling through the valleys, for the Afridis have a marked objection to moving about after nightfall. Once or twice one or two of them approached them, but Carter raised such a loud and threatening roar, that they in each case retreated with all speed to their village, which they filled with alarm with tales of having encountered strange and terrible creatures.
Gradually the difficulties decreased, the mountains became less precipitous, the valleys larger and more thickly inhabited, a matter which caused them no inconvenience as they always traversed them at night. During their journey Carter had filled Nita's note-book with sketches and maps, which, as the country was wholly unexplored, would be of great advantage to an advancing army when properly copied out on a large scale. He was clever with his pencil, and Nita used to be greatly interested in his lively little sketches of the scenery through which they passed.
"It will be very useful to me," he said; "and in the event of troops having to march through this district, should go a long way towards securing me a staff appointment, for in such a case these sketches and maps would be invaluable, and I should get no end of credit for them."