a heavy and dreamless sleep.

It might have been four or five hours afterwards, when Frank was roused
by a pricking feeling as though some one had stabbed him slightly with a
knife. He started up. The hut was quite dark, though the stars outside
were faintly glimmering. He was about to cry out when a hand was placed
on his mouth, and a voice whispered in his ear.

"It me--Kobo. No make noise. I come help you get away." At the same
instant he again felt the prick of the knife, and the leather thong drop
from his arm. In a moment the explanation of Kobo's altered demeanour
occurred to him. The man had affected the bitter hatred he had
expressed, in order that they might be handed over to his custody
instead of that of Maomo, as they would have been, had he been suspected
of being their friend.

"All right, Kobo," he said softly; "shall I strike a light?"

"No, no. That spoil all. If you have knife, cut the fastenings of your
legs. I set prophet free."

The others were roused with the same caution which Frank had received,
and in a few minutes they were all at liberty. Then Kobo addressed
them, still speaking under his breath.

"Chief and all much drunk. Only rainmaker sober. He suspect me. He
watch me while feast go on. I see him, though he not guess it. I seem
to drink twice as much as any, but throw it all away on ground. When
feast half over, I tumble flat Rainmaker think Kobo drunk, but I creep
away in dark. Now all follow me; creep like snake among hedge and bush;
lucky no moon to-night."

Following his direction, the whole party emerged one after another from
the hut, and crawled on their hands and knees among the dwarf shrubs
which lay scattered over the ground, until they had reached Kobo's
cottage, which was on the outskirts of the village. Here they found
their guns, belts, and flasks, carefully hidden away under a heap of
weeds. Having possessed themselves of these, they again hurried on,
keeping within the cover of the wood, until they were at least half a
mile from the Bechuana village; when the wooded covert gave place to an
open plain overspread with large stones, and now and then patches of
thorn.

"Get on as fast as we can," was Kobo's direction now. "Too far from
kraal for Bechuanas to follow to-night."

"And to-morrow they will none of them be in a condition to undertake any
long journey, I expect," observed Nick.

"Rainmaker not drunk. He keep sober," said Kobo. "Ver