t not much, and all are made happy. Still,
I wish we could get out of these reeds of which I never want to see
another, and Baas, please keep your rifle ready for I think I hear a
crocodile stirring there."

"No need, Hans," I remarked sarcastically. "Go and tell him that I have
the Great Medicine."

"Yes, Baas, I will; also that if he is very hungry, there are some Zulus
camped a few yards further down the road," and he went solemnly to the
reeds a little way off and began to talk to them.

"You infernal donkey!" I murmured, and drew my blanket over my head in
a vain attempt to keep out the mosquitoes and smoking furiously with the
same object, tried to get to sleep.

At last the swamp bottom began to slope upwards a little, with the
result that as the land dried through natural drainage, the reeds grew
thinner by degrees, until finally they ceased and we found ourselves on
firmer ground; indeed, upon the lowest slopes of the great mountain that
I have mentioned, that now towered above us, forbidden and majestic.

I had made a little map in my pocket-book of the various twists and
turns of the road through that vast Slough of Despond, marking them from
hour to hour as we followed its devious wanderings. On studying this
at the end of that part of our journey I realised afresh how utterly
impossible it would have been for us to thread that misty maze where a
few false steps would always have meant death by suffocation, had it not
been for the spoor of those Amahagger travelling immediately ahead of us
who were acquainted with its secrets. Had they been friendly guides they
could not have done us a better turn.

What I wondered was why they had not tried to ambush us in the reeds,
since our fires must have shown them that we were close upon their
heels. That they did try to burn us out was clear from certain evidences
that I found, but fortunately at this season of the year in the absence
of a strong wind the rank reeds were too green to catch fire. For the
rest I was soon to learn the reason of their neglect to attack us in
that dense cover.

They were waiting for a better opportunity!

CHAPTER X

THE ATTACK

We won out of the reeds at last, for which I fervently thanked God,
since to have crossed that endless marsh unguided, with the loss of only
one man, seemed little less than miraculous. We emerged from them late
in the afternoon and being wearied out, stopped for a while to rest and
eat of the