mself, and wishes to start at once."

"We could give him an arm by turns, if that was all; but the question
is, Charles, could we reach any good halting-place?" suggested Warley.

"That's just it, Ernest," returned Charles. "Omatoko says that about
four or five miles from this there is a place where we could stay two or
three days, if necessary, and find plenty of food and water. It is a
ruined kraal--destroyed by the Dutch, he says, many years ago, but some
of the cottages are still in sufficient repair to shelter us."

"Why shouldn't we stay here?" asked Nick, with his mouth full of parrot.
"This is a jolly place enough--fresh water, lots of melons and parrots,
and they're both of them capital eating. And a comfortable
sleeping-place. If we must make a halt anywhere, why not here? It's a
capital place, I think, except for the baboons," he muttered in a lower
tone, as the recollection of his recent adventure suddenly occurred to
him.

"Why shouldn't we stay here?" repeated Lavie. "Well, I'll tell you,
Gilbert. It isn't so much the wild beasts--though a place which every
night is full of lions, rhinoceroses, and leopards doesn't exactly suit
anybody but a professed hunter--but there is the fear of the Bushmen
returning to cut off Omatoko's head, whom they will expect to find dead.
And if they find him alive, it is most probable that they will do both
him and us some deadly mischief. And they may be looked for to-day, or
to-morrow, certainly. Besides--"

"There's no need to say any more, I am sure," broke in Gilbert. "I
didn't think of the Bushmen. Let us be off at once, I say. I'd rather
carry the Hottentot on my shoulders than stay here to be murdered,
probably, by those savages!"

"Well, I own I think the return of the Bushmen quite enough by itself,"
said the surgeon; "but I ought to add that Omatoko thinks the weather is
going to change, and there is likely before long to be a violent storm.
None of you have had much experience of what an African storm is like.
But I have had quite as much as I desire, and do not wish to encounter
it, without a roof of some kind over my head! Well, then, if we are all
ready, let us set out at once."

The grove and pool were soon left behind. Omatoko stepped out
valiantly, sometimes leaning on Lavie's or Warley's shoulder, and
sitting down to rest, whenever a thicket of trees afforded a sufficient
close screen to hide the party from sight. They noticed that befo