father kept the captain in converse, she, with quivering lips,
had breathed words of hope into my ear.

"Listen, Val," she said. "Your father bids me say that you are to watch
for your chance, and then make a dash for your liberty. Gallop to Echo
Nek, and you will find Joeboy waiting there with a rifle and cartridges.
But you must not come back here. Joeboy will bring a letter."

My heart was bounding with hope, and I felt ready for anything just
then, as the captain gave the orders "Mount!" and then "Forward!" But
the next minute my spirits sank into the darkness of misery. For what
had Aunt Jenny said? Joeboy would be waiting at Echo Nek with a rifle
and cartridges. Yes; but poor Joeboy had taken flight at the appearance
of the Boers, and fled for his liberty, in the belief that they had come
for him.

CHAPTER FOUR.

WAITING FOR MY CHANCE.

I rode on painfully as regarded my wrists; for above them my arms
throbbed and burned as if the veins were distended almost to
bursting-point, while my hands grew gradually cold and numb, and then
became insensible as so much lead. The physical pain, however, was
nothing to what I felt mentally. Only an hour or two before I was
leading that calm, happy home-life, without a trouble beyond some petty
disappointment in the garden or farm or during one of the hunting or
shooting expeditions with Joeboy to carry my game; and now a
lightning-like stroke seemed to have descended to end my idyllic
boy-life and make me a man full of suffering, and with a future which I
abhorred.

"No," I argued, "I must escape, even if they do send a shower of bullets
to bring me down." I did not believe much in the vaunted powers of the
Boers with the rifle. I knew that they could shoot well, but no better
than my father and his two pupils, meaning Bob and myself; and I felt
that we should have been very doubtful about bringing down a man going
at full gallop, even in the brightest daylight; and I meant to make my
venture in the dusk of the evening or after dark if only my captors
would continue their journey then. Once well started, and my rein free
of the man who held it buckled to his saddle-bow, I had no fear at all,
for I was sure that in a straight race there was not a Boer amongst them
who could overtake me, they being heavy, middle-aged men, while I was
young and light, quite at home in the saddle, and Sandho as much at home
with me, upon his back. Arms? I could do without