to walk smartly, too, guided by the very ungentle
hands which urged me forward.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

THE DEN OF THE CATTLE STEALERS.

To give an adequate idea of my thoughts and feelings at that moment, or
during those that followed, would amount to a sheer impossibility.
Truly I had distinguished myself. I had undertaken to recover the
stolen steed in bold and doughty fashion, and had allowed myself to be
drawn into the most transparent booby-trap ever devised for the
deception of mortal idiot. Instead of returning in triumph, having
fulfilled Beryl's parting injunction, here was I, strapped up
helplessly, my head and face swathed in a filthy greasy Kafir blanket,
only able to breathe--and that with difficulty--through its unspeakably
nauseous folds. Heavens! I wonder I was not sick. Kicked and punched
too, and a butt for every kind of jeer and insult from these black
ruffians, although of course I could not understand the burden of the
latter. But where was it going to end?

Why had they not murdered me then and there? I thought. Could it be
that they were taking me to some secure place where they might do it at
their leisure, and hide away my body in some hole or cave where there
was not the smallest chance of it ever being found, and so bearing
witness against themselves? It looked like it--and the idea made my
blood run cold with a very real and genuine fear.

All thoughts of rescue--of immediate rescue--I was forced to put aside;
delayed rescue would be too late. My comrades would hardly succeed in
spooring us in the dark, and it was quite dark now; moreover, they were
but three, and judging from the varying voices of those who held me, the
latter must be fairly numerous. No, the situation was hopeless--
abjectly hopeless. Half-dead with fatigue and semi-suffocation, my mind
a prey to the most acute humiliation and self-reproach, I stumbled on--
how I did so I hardly know. At last I could bear it no longer. They
might kill me if they liked, but not another step would I stir until
that horrible suffocating gag was removed.

Something of this must have struck them too, for after a muttered
consultation, they began fumbling at the cattle thongs with which I was
bound, and lo; the filthy blanket was dragged off my head, and I sat
drinking in the fresh night air in long draughts.

"No talk--no call out," said a voice at my side. "You talk--you call
out, then--so."

It was not too dark to see