The appalling details of the gruesome tragedy
chased each other through his mind in all their red horror, and his
overwrought brain would conjure up the most grisly forebodings. What if
he should arrive too late! Those unprotected women helpless at the
mercy of these fiends, red-handed from the scene of their last ruthless
crime, devils incarnate let loose upon the earth, their lives forfeit,
the noose ready for their necks, their only object to perpetrate as many
hideous infamies as possible before meeting the doom that would sooner
or later be theirs! No wonder the man's brain seemed on fire.

The road took a sudden trend downwards. The river must be crossed here.
The drift was a bad one in the daytime, at night a dangerous one. But
the latter consideration, far from daunting him, rather tended to brace
Renshaw's nerves. Warily he urged his horse on.

The water was up to the saddle-flaps--then a step deeper. The horse,
now almost swimming, snorted wildly as the roaring whirling flood
creamed around him in the starlight. But the rider kept him well by the
head, and in a trice he emerged panting and dripping on the other side.

Suddenly in front from the bush fringing the road there flashed forth a
faint spark, as of a man blowing on a burnt stick to light his pipe.
All Renshaw's coolness returned, and gathering up his reins, he prepared
to make a dash for it. Then the spark floated straight towards him,
and--he laughed at his fears. It was only a firefly. On still. He
would soon be there now. Another drift in the river--splash--splash--
out again--still onward.

Suddenly the horse pricked forward his ears and began to snort uneasily.
Now for it! Still it might be only a leopard or a snake. But all
doubt was speedily nipped in the bud by a harsh voice, in Dutch, calling
upon him to stop.

Peering forward into the darkness, he made out two figures--one tall,
the other short. They were about a dozen yards in front, and were
standing in the middle of the road as though to bar his passage. There
was no leaving the road, by reason of the bush which lined it on either
side in a dense, impenetrable thicket.

This was by no means Renshaw Fanning's first experience of more or less
deadly peril, as we have already shown, and his unswerving coolness
under such circumstances was never so consummately in hand as now, when
not merely his own life, but the lives of others dearer to him still,
were in the balance