the mouth of
Machudi's glen.

My chickens had been counted too soon, and there was to be no hatching.
Colin grew uneasy, and began to sniff up wind. I was maybe a quarter
of a mile from the glen foot, plodding through the long grass of the
hollow, when the behaviour of the dog made me stop and listen. In that
still air sounds carry far, and I seemed to hear the noise of feet
brushing through cover. The noise came both from north and south, from
the forest and from the lower course of the Machudi.

I dropped into shelter, and running with bent back got to the summit of
a little bush-clad knoll. It was Colin who first caught sight of my
pursuers. He was staring at a rift in the trees, and suddenly gave a
short bark. I looked and saw two men, running hard, cross the grass
and dip into the bed of the stream. A moment later I had a glimpse of
figures on the edge of the forest, moving fast to the mouth of the
glen. The pursuit had not followed me; it had waited to cut me off.
Fool that I was, I had forgotten the wonders of Kaffir telegraphy. It
had been easy for Laputa to send word thirty miles ahead to stop any
white man who tried to cross the Berg.

And then I knew that I was very weary.

CHAPTER XV

MORNING IN THE BERG

I was perhaps half a mile the nearer to the glen, and was likely to get
there first. And after that? I could see the track winding by the
waterside and then crossing a hill-shoulder which diverted the stream.
It was a road a man could scarcely ride, and a tired man would have a
hard job to climb. I do not think that I had any hope. My
exhilaration had died as suddenly as it had been born. I saw myself
caught and carried off to Laputa, who must now be close on the
rendezvous at Inanda's Kraal. I had no weapon to make a fight for it.
My foemen were many and untired. It must be only a matter of minutes
till I was in their hands.

More in a dogged fury of disappointment than with any hope of escape I
forced my sore legs up the glen. Ten minutes ago I had been exulting
in the glories of the morning, and now the sun was not less bright or
the colours less fair, but the heart had gone out of the spectator. At
first I managed to get some pace out of myself, partly from fear and
partly from anger. But I soon found that my body had been tried too
far. I could plod along, but to save my life I could not have hurried.
Any healthy savage could have caught me in a hundred yards.

The tra