sank down and seemed to go to sleep and on
examination we found that she was dead. So we left her and went on.

Next day we came to the edge of the Great River, here a sheet of placid
running water about a mile across, for at this time of the year it was
low. Perceiving quite a big village on our left, we went to it and
made enquiries, to find that it had not been attacked by the cannibals,
probably because it was too powerful, but that three nights before some
of their canoes had been stolen, in which no doubt these had crossed the
river.

As the people of this village had traded with Robertson at Strathmuir,
we had no difficulty in obtaining other canoes from them in which to
cross the Zambesi in return for one of our oxen that I could see was
already sickening from tsetse bite. These canoes were large enough to
take the donkeys that were patient creatures and stood still, but the
cattle we could not get into them for fear of an upset. So we killed
the two driven beasts that were left to us and took them with us as
dead meat for food, while the three remaining pack oxen we tried to swim
across, dragging them after the canoes with hide _reims_ round their
horns. As a result two were drowned, but one, a bold-hearted and
enterprising animal, gained the other bank.

Here again we struck a sea of reeds in which, after casting about, Hans
once more found the spoor of the Amahagger. That it was theirs beyond
doubt was proved by the circumstance that on a thorny kind of weed we
found a fragment of a cotton dress which, because of the pattern stamped
on it, we all recognised as one that Inez had been wearing. At first I
thought that this had been torn off by the thorns, but on examination
we became certain that it had been placed there purposely, probably
by Janee, to give us a clue. This conclusion was confirmed when at
subsequent periods of the hunt we found other fragments of the same
garment.

Now it would be useless for me to set out the details of this prolonged
and arduous chase which in all endured for something over three weeks.
Again and again we lost the trail and were only able to recover it by
long and elaborate search, which occupied much time. Then, after we
escaped from the reeds and swamps, we found ourselves upon stony
uplands where the spoor was almost impossible to follow, indeed, we only
rediscovered it by stumbling across the dead body of that cannibal whom
Inez had wounded. Evidently he had perished