man. That much was certain. And he, Hilary Blachland, who at one
time would have endorsed the hard necessity without a qualm, hardened,
ruthless, inexorable, why should he run such grave and deadly risk for
the sake of one man who was only an acquaintance after all--yet here he
was doing so as a matter of course. What had changed him? He knew.

And the risk was great--deadly indeed. The savages had hung upon the
rear of the patrol right up to the fall of night, and the subsequent
retreat. The bush was full of them, and in unknown numbers. It was to
him a marvel and a mystery that he had as yet sighted none. Other sign,
too, did not escape his practised understanding. There was no game
about, none whatever--and even the birds flitting from spray to spray
were abnormally shy and wild. Now he could locate, some way ahead of
him, the scene of yesterday's fight.

Then an idea struck him. What if the missing man, confused by the
spoor, had made for the river bank, intending to follow it? Deflecting
to his right he crossed the track, and rode along it on the farther
edge, minutely examining the ground.

Ha! Just as he thought. Footmarks--the imprint of boots--very ragged,
half soleless boots--the footprints of one man. These turned out of the
spoor, and slightly at right angles took the direction of the river
bank. There was no difficulty whatever in following them. In the deep,
soft ground, rendered almost boggy in parts by the recent and continuous
rains, their imprint was as the face of an open book. Blachland's heart
rose exceedingly. He would soon find the wanderer, mount him behind him
on his horse and bring him back safely.

Then another thought struck him. Skelsey was no raw Britisher. He was
a Natal man, and had been up-country, prospecting, for the last two or
three years. Why the deuce then should he be unable to follow a plain
broad spoor, for this seemed the only way of accounting for his
deflection? Well, he would very soon overtake him now, so it didn't
matter.

Didn't it? What was this? And Blachland, pulling in his horse, sat
there in his saddle, his face feeling cold and white under its warm
bronze. For now there were other footmarks and many of them. And these
were the marks of naked feet.

They seemed to have clustered together in a confused pattern, all around
the first spoor. It was as plain as the title page of a book. They had
struck the two foot marks here and had hal