"Now I think we can steer our way," whispered Thornhill. "Our nearest is by old Zisiso's kraal, but that's a regular path, and we don't want that. We'll keep a bit up, and we shall have the double advantage of avoiding the enemy--every Kafir is an enemy now--and being able to get an occasional outlook over the country. If we don't fetch Kwabulazi by sunrise we shall have to lie low all through to-morrow."

Steadily they held on. Thornhill was a master of veldt-craft, and Elvesdon did not come very far behind him in that line for all that he was professionally an official. The night air blew keen and chill, very chill, but the walking exercise largely counteracted that. And the sense of freedom again was exhilarating in itself--still more so was the sense of the impending reunion.

They did not talk as they travelled--when they had occasion to do so it was in the barest whispers. In ordinary and peaceful times they would not have encountered a living soul, for the native is strongly averse to moving about at night. Now, however, it was different. They might run into an impi at any moment, travelling swiftly across country to take up its position for attack or observation.

The night was dark, but, fortunately there was no mist. The stars to a certain degree piloted their direction, as they do, or should do, to every dweller in the free, spa.r.s.ely inhabited open. Only this was not so spa.r.s.ely inhabited, in that twice they came upon a large kraal where the inhabitants were alert and on the move, a thing they would never have been at that time of night, in peaceful times.

Now as they got almost within the glow of the red fires of one of these there was a rush and an open-mouthed clamour of curs, and that in their direction. The inhabitants, too, seemed to pause, and gaze suspiciously upwards--fortunately they were above them, on the apex of a ridge.

"_Gahle_, _Gahle_! Elvesdon!" whispered Thornhill. "They've spotted us. This way. Don't rattle more stones than you can help."

They plunged down the other side of the rise. Ah but, they were many wearisome miles from safety--and they were unmounted.

Along the hillside they made their way, but how slow did that way seem to men unaccustomed to doing that sort of travelling on foot. The dawn began to show signs of breaking, and they were still a long way from Kwabulazi. A weary day of close hiding and starvation lay before them.

It was light enough now to distinguish the surroundings. Suddenly Thornhill stopped and was listening intently.

"All up," he said. "Look."

The other followed the direction of his gaze. The tops of the bushes were shaking in a long quivering line. Clearly their enemies had been tracking them like hounds, throughout the dark hours.

"We can make a stand here as well as anywhere," growled Thornhill. "We hold five lives apiece, and the last bullet for ourselves--if we get time. Oh-h!"

A burning, blinding flash came before his eyes. Everything whirled round him, and he sank to the earth. Elvesdon set his teeth, with something like the snarl of a wild beast as his revolver bullet thudded hard into the naked form of the savage who had just hurled the deadly a.s.segai, at the same time dropping another who was in the act of following it up by a second cast. For the moment none seemed anxious to take the risk of that quick, deadly aim.

Elvesdon glanced down at his unconscious friend, from whose head the blood was pouring. The a.s.segai had struck him on the temple, and the blade, glancing along the skull had laid it bare in a frightful gash, with the effect of momentary stunning. The position was a low bush, the ground being open for more than a score of yards from it on the side of the attack, but this none of the a.s.sailants seemed eager to take the risk of crossing. He crouched down low so as to offer as small a mark as possible, and cool with the deadly calmness of desperation watched his chance.

It came. A movement among the bushes told that their enemies were making a surrounding move. For less than a second one of them showed, and again the pistol spoke, but whether with effect or not he was unable to determine. And then, if there was room for any addition to the utter despair which was upon him, Elvesdon's quick, searching glance became alive to something else. On the roll of the slope, approaching from the direction they had been taking, the bushes were agitating in the morning stillness, and there was no breeze. His a.s.sailants were being reinforced, and as though to prove that fact beyond a doubt, there was a report of firearms, then another, and something hummed unpleasantly near. They had got rifles then? Well they could not go on missing him all day.

"Lie flat, Mister, and give us a chance of letting 'em have h.e.l.l."

The loud, hearty English hail was as a voice from Heaven. With characteristic prompt.i.tude Elvesdon obeyed, and then came a dropping volley, as the rescuers advanced in a line through the bushes, getting in their fire whenever an enemy showed himself. They were on foot, having left their horses just beyond the rise, with the object of making a silent advance and thus surprising the savages the more effectively.

The latter did not wait. They were in sufficient strength to tackle two men, but not such an opponent as the relieving force, of whose very number they were ignorant. So they wriggled away as swiftly and noiselessly as so many snakes, not, however, entirely without loss.

"Hallo. Who's down?" cried Hyland Thornhill, coming up to the group standing around the two. "Eh? Who the blazes is down?"

They made way for him in silence.

"Oh, good G.o.d!" he cried, staggering to the ground beside the wounded man. "He isn't killed--no d.a.m.n it--he isn't killed," gritting his teeth. "Oh, dear old dad--tell me you know me, for G.o.d's sake."

A wave of returning consciousness swept over the face of the wounded man. He opened his eyes, and there was a gleam of recognition in them.

Then he closed them, knitting his brows as though in pain.

Thus Hyland Thornhill succeeded in rescuing his father--but--was it too late?

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

THORNHILL'S STORY.

"Will you go in and see him, Evelyn? No, it's not you Edala. He wants to talk to Evelyn this time."

Hyland had just come from his father's sick room. Both girls, awaiting the summons, had started up. Some days had pa.s.sed since the rescue party had returned to Kwabulazi, but the wounded man did not seem to improve. The doctor feared lest erysipelas might set in, it was even possible that the patient might lose his sight, for the wound had perforce been dressed in rough and ready fashion at the time--indeed but that they had put their best foot foremost in the retreat they would have been attacked by a force whose overwhelming strength would have rendered ma.s.sacre almost a certainty. As it was they were pressed hard to within a mile of the entrenchments; but some at any rate among the savages had had experience in trying to rush that very entrenchment, and had no stomach for a repet.i.tion thereof. So the impi had drawn off.

To her dying day Edala will never forget the return of that rescue party--and the lifting down of her father's half--unconscious form from the horse on which Hyland had supported him--the deathly pallor of the drawn face, the beard all clotted with dried blood, the hands limp and nerveless. So utterly did she give way, in the plenitude of her grief and gnawing remorse that several of the men had to turn away with a suspicious choke.

"Too late! Too late!" she moaned, throwing herself on the ground beside him. "You said it would be, and it is."

"But it isn't," struck in Hyland. "He's got a bad knock on the head, but old Vine'll be able to put that right. Come, get up, Edala dear.

We must put him to bed, you know."

The tone was decisive, practical, but the speaker felt far from as confident as he would have his sister believe. And Dr Vine's diagnosis was by no means rea.s.suring. He feared complications. So the wounded man was carried into the airiest and most comfortable room in Elvesdon's far from luxurious house, where all was done for him that could be done.

There was difficulty with Edala. She refused to leave the bedside day or night. It was only when her father recovered full consciousness that they were able to get her away, when she had poured out her soul to him in an agony of remorse and self-reproach. Then he had soothed her, and insisted upon her taking rest and food; and she had obeyed unquestioningly. His lightest word was law now--as it had been in the times long past. She was allowed to help her brother and Elvesdon in their unremitting care of the wounded man, and the same held good of Evelyn Carden. But it was once and for all decided that neither of the girls should be allowed to overdo it, and this was adhered to no matter how much they begged and pleaded.

Elvesdon had taken up the reins of office again, and found his hands very full indeed. The telegraph wire had been repaired, and messages kept flashing in, communicating matters which demanded his constant attention, some necessary and some not. But at night he never curtailed one single half hour of his vigil at the bedside of his friend in recently and narrowly escaped peril. They had gone through a furnace together.

Strong man as he was the strain was beginning to tell upon Elvesdon. He looked pale and f.a.gged, and his spirits became depressed. His conversation with Thornhill in the hour of their mutual danger was fresh in his mind, but although he saw a great deal of Edala there was nothing in the girl's look or manner to show that she regarded him in the light of any other than an ordinary friend, a jolly good chum with no nonsense about him, and whom she could treat with the same free, frank _camaraderie_ as her own brother. This, of course, was no time to urge any further claim upon her: he recognised that. Still he felt depressed.

While feeling a little more so than usual there came a knock at his office door. It was late afternoon and he was wondering whether he could venture to shut up for a time before any more of those beastly wires came in.

"Miss Thornhill would like to see you, sir," said Prior, entering.

"Will you see her?"

"Why of course. And--er--Prior. I don't want to be disturbed, no matter who by. See?"

Prior did see, and if the Governor himself had appeared on the scene until that door should open again, decidedly His Excellency would have had to wait.

"And now, to what is this unwonted honour due?" he began, closing the door behind his visitor. "First of all, sit. Why, _Diane cha.s.seresse_, you have not been obeying orders I'm afraid. You are looking a little bit--well, overdone."

"That's better than feeling a good bit underdone," she rejoined with something of her old, bright laugh.

"How's the patient? Any further improvement?"

"Rather. Old Vine says we needn't be anxious any more."

"That's right royal news. We ought to give three cheers. But it was sweet of you to come and tell me this, Edala."

The name came out half-unconsciously. He had taken to using it of late: their new _rapprochement_ in the circ.u.mstances of a mutual care and anxiety had seemed to render it natural. And she had never resented it or shown any sign of astonishment.

"I didn't come to tell it you," answered the girl, in her direct straightforward way. She had risen from her chair, and the clear blue eyes met his full, yet he thought to detect in them a shade of embarra.s.sment. "What I came to tell you was--is--what an ungrateful, unappreciative little beast I must have seemed all this time never to have said a word about your bravery--your heroism. You saved father's life. You stood over him and kept off those brutes when--when--"

She broke off, with a little stamp of the foot. Her eyes were beginning to fill. Elvesdon's face flushed uneasily.

"No--no--no. 'Bravery! Heroism!' Bah!" he answered. "You don't suppose I was going to run away and leave him, do you? Why even Ramasam would hardly have done that. Besides--if I had wanted to ever so much I couldn't have got far. We were unmounted remember. And, if you only knew it, I've been cursing myself and my own idiocy right roundly in having been such a blithering idiot as to get us into that hobble at all. I daresay I shall get a kick down in the Service on the strength of it when my full report goes in, and I haven't spared myself in it I can tell you."

"Have you sent it in yet?" asked the girl, speaking quickly.