Part 35 (2/2)

For a few minutes thus he crouched, collecting his returning faculties-- and the first thing that came home to him was that he was in one of those cavernlike inlets on the river bank similar to that in which his struggle with Ziboza had taken place. Stay! Was it the same? He had a confused recollection of being swept out into stream, but that might have been an illusion. He peered around. The place was very dark but it was not a cave. The overhanging of one side of the cleft, and the interlacing of bushes and trees above, however, rendered it very like one. But this fissure was much smaller than the one he had fallen into with the Matabele chief, nor was it anything like as deep.

Had he been swept far down the river, he wondered? Then he decided such could not have been the case, or he would have been drowned or knocked to pieces among the driftwood, whereas here he was, practically unharmed, only very exhausted. A thrill of exultation ran through his dripping frame as he realised that he was uninjured. But it did not last, for--he realised something further.

He realised that he was weaponless. His rifle had been shot from his hand. He had lost his revolver in his fall, and even the sheath knife, wherewith he had slain Ziboza, he had relaxed his grasp of at the moment of being swept away. He was that most helpless animal of all--an unarmed man.

He realised further that he was in the remotest and most unknown part of little known Matabeleland, that he had formed one of a _retreating_ column, which was fighting its own way out, and which would have given him up as dead long ago: that no further advance was likely to be made in this direction for some time to come, and that meanwhile every human being in the country was simply a ruthless and uncompromising foe. He realised, too, that save for a few sc.r.a.ps of grimy biscuit, now soaked to pulp in his jacket pocket, and plentifully spiced with tobacco dust, he was without food--and entirely without means of procuring any--and that he dared not leave his present shelter until nightfall, if then.

In sum he realised that at last, even he, Hilary Blachland, was in very hard and desperate case indeed.

Were his enemies still searching for him, he wondered, or had they concluded he had met his death in the raging waters of the flooded river, as indeed it seemed to him little short of a miracle that he had not? The rain was still pouring down, and the lightning flashes lit up the slippery sides of his hiding-place with a steely glare: however, the fury of the storm seemed to have spent itself, or pa.s.sed over, but the bellowing, vomiting voice of the flood as it surged past the retreat, was sufficient to drown all other sounds. Then it occurred to him that he could be seen from above by any one peering over. He must get further in.

He was more than knee deep in water. Towards its head, however, the cleft was dry. It terminated in a cavity just large enough for him to crouch within--overhung too, with thorn bush from above. An ideal hiding-place.

The situation reminded him of something. Once he had shot a guinea-fowl on a river bank, and the bird had dropped into just such a cleft as this. After a long and careful search, he had discovered it, crouching, just as he was now crouching. It was only winged, however, and fled further into the cleft. He remembered the fierce eagerness with which he had pursued the wounded bird, fearing to lose it, how he had pounced upon and seized it when it came to the end of the cleft and could get no further. Well, events had a knack of repeating themselves. He was the hunted one now.

Wet through now, he s.h.i.+vered to the very bones. The pangs of hunger were gnawing him. He dived a hand into his pocket. The pulpy biscuit was well-nigh uneatable, and black with tobacco dust. There was no help for it. He swallowed the stuff greedily, and it produced a horrible nausea. Soaked, chilled through and through, he crouched throughout that long terrible day, and a sort of lightheadedness came over him.

Once more he was within Umzilikazi's sepulchre, and the awful coils of the black _mamba_ were waving, over yonder in the gloom, then, with a prolonged hiss, the terror plunged into the flood which was bearing him along. It had seized his legs beneath the surface and was dragging him down--and then it changed to Hermia. She was in the stream with him, and he was striving to save her, and yet fiercely combating a longing to let her drown, but ever around his heart was one yearning, aching pain, an awful, unsatisfied longing for a presence, a glimpse of a face--he hardly realised whose--and it would not come. Had he gone mad--he wondered dully, or was this delirium, the beginning of the end, or the terrible unsatisfied longings of another world? Then even that amount of brain consciousness faded, and he slept. Chilled, soaked, starred-- his case desperate--down there in that clay-girt hole, he slept.

When he awoke it was quite dark, and the roar of the flood seemed to have decreased considerably in intensity. Clearly the river had ran down. How long he had been asleep he could form no approximate idea, but the thought moved him to hold his watch to his ear even though he could not see it. But it did not tick. The water had stopped it of course.

Yes, the river had gone down, for no water was left in the cranny now.

Moreover, the entrance to his hiding-place was several feet above the surface. The next thing was to get out. Simple it sounds, doesn't it?

But the sides of the cleft, wet and slimy from the rain, offered no foothold. There were boughs hanging from above--but on clambering up these, lo, the lip of the cleft was overhung with a complete _chevaux-de-frise_ of _haakdoorn_, a ma.s.s of terrible fishhooks, turned every way, as their manner is, so as to be absolutely impenetrable, save to him who should be armed with a sharp cane knife with abundant room and purchase for plying it. To an enfeebled and exhausted man, obliged to use one if not both hands for holding on to his support and armed with nothing at all, the obstacle was simply unnegotiable. He was at the bottom of a gigantic natural beetle trap--with this difference that there remained one way out: the way by which he had got in--the river to wit.

From this alternative he shrank. The flood had very considerably decreased; yet there was abundance of water still running down, quite enough to tax the full resources of an average strong swimmer--moreover, he knew that the banks were clayey and overhanging for a considerable distance down--and over and above that, the rains would have bordered the said banks, even where shelving, with dangerous quicksands. Yet another peril lay in the fact that the stream was inhabited by the evil-minded, carnivorous crocodile. It was one thing to choose the river as a means to avoid an even surer peril still, it was quite another to take to it in cold blood, for it might mean all the difference between getting in and getting out again. But a further careful investigation of his prison decided him that it was the only way.

Letting himself cautiously down, so as to drop with as little splash as possible, he was in the river once more, but somehow the water seemed warmer than the atmosphere in his chilled state, as, partly swimming, partly holding on to a log of driftwood, he allowed the stream to carry him down. It was a weird experience, whirled along by the current in the darkness, the high banks bounding a broad riband of stars overhead, but it was one to be got through as quickly as possible, for have we not said that the river was inhabited by crocodiles? Carefully selecting a likely place, the fugitive succeeded in landing.

Many a man in his position, alone, unarmed, and without food, in the heart of a trackless wilderness whose every inhabitant was uncompromisingly hostile, would have lost his head and got turned round indeed. But Hilary Blachland was made of different stuff. He was far too experienced and resourceful an up-country man to lose his head in the smallest degree. He understood how to shape his bearings by the stars, and fortunately the sky was unclouded; and in the daytime by the sun and the trend of the watercourses whether dry or not. So he began his retreat, facing almost due south.

Fortune favoured him, for in the early morning light he espied a large hare sitting up on its haunches, stupidly looking about it. A deft, quick, stone throw, and the too confiding animal lay kicking. Here was a food supply which at a pinch would last him a couple of days.

Selecting as shut in a spot as he could find, he built a fire, being careful to avoid unnecessary smoke, and cooked the hare--his matches had been soaked in the river, but he was far too experienced to be without flint and steel.

For four days thus he wandered, without seeing an enemy. A small deserted kraal furnished him with more food, for he knew where to find the grain pits, and then, just as he was beginning to congratulate himself that safety was nearly within his grasp, he ran right into a party of armed Matabele.

There was only one thing to be done and he did it. Advancing with an apparent fearlessness he was far from feeling, he greeted the leader of the party, whom he knew. The demeanour of the savages was sullen rather than overtly hostile, and this was a good sign, still Blachland knew that his life hung upon a hair. There was yet another thing he knew, and it was well he did. This petty chief, Ngeleza, was abnormally imbued with a characteristic common to all savages--acquisitiveness to wit. This was the string upon which to play. So he represented how anxious he was to return to Bulawayo, as soon as possible, ignoring the fact that the war was not over, or indeed that there was any war at all, and that they could not do better than guide him thither. He gave Ngeleza to understand that he would pay well for such a service, and not only that, but that all who had the smallest share in its rendering, should receive a good reward--this for the enlightenment of the rest of the band, which numbered a round dozen men. It was well, too, that Ngeleza knew him--knew him for a man of substance, and a man of his word.

CHAPTER NINE.

CONCLUSION.

The New Year is very young now, and Lannercost is well-nigh hidden in its wealth of leafiness, and very different is the rich languorous midsummer air to the bracing crispness under which we last saw it.

Other things are different too, as we, perchance, shall see, but what is not different is the warmth of welcome accorded to Hilary Blachland to that which he expected it to be--for the war in far-away Matabeleland is practically over, and this man who has borne so full a part in it, is enjoying a much-needed and well-earned rest.

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