to be
engaged at the time. No, he could not afford to lose a minute.

It was a hot afternoon. The sun glared fiercely down as he rode over
the dozen miles of open undulating country which lay between the town
and the first line of wooded hills. A quarter of an hour's off-saddle
at a roadside inn--a feverish quarter of an hour, spent with his watch
in his hand. Then on again.

Soon he was among the hills. Away up a diverging kloof lay a Boer
homestead, about a mile distant. Should he turn off to it and try and
borrow a weapon, or, at any rate, a fresh horse, and warn the inmates?
Prudence answered No. Two miles out of his road, delay in the middle,
and all on the purest chance. On, on!

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

AGAINST TIME.

By sundown Renshaw was in the heart of the mountains. And now, as his
steed's gait warned him, it was time to off-saddle again. The river lay
below, about a hundred yards from the road. Dismounting, he led his
horse down through the thick bush, and removing the saddle, but not the
bridle, which latter he held in his hand, allowed the animal to graze
and get somewhat cooler before drinking. Then, saddling up again, he
regained the road.

The latter was in most parts very bad, as it wound its rugged length
through a savage and desolate _poort_ or defile, which in itself was one
long ambuscade, for thick bush grew up to the very roadside, in places
overhanging it. The sun had set, but a lurid afterglow was still
reflected upon the iron face of a tall krantz, which, rising from the
steep forest-clad slope, cleft the sky. Great baboons, squatted on high
among the rocks, sent forth their deep-chested, far-sounding bark, in
half-startled, half-angry recognition of the presence of their natural
enemy--man; and, wheeling above the tree-tops, ascending higher and
higher in airy circles to their roost among the crags, floated a pair of
_lammervangers_ [A species of black eagle] whose raucous voices rang out
in croaking scream over the glooming depths of the lone defile like the
weird wailing of a demoniac.

Darkness fell, for there is no twilight to speak of beneath the Southern
Cross, and the dull, dead silence of the mighty solitude was unbroken,
save for the hoarse roar of the river surging through its rocky channel,
and the measured hoof-beats of the horse. And as he urged the animal on
through the gloom all Renshaw's apprehensions seemed to renew themselves
with tenfold intensity.