"What a narrow escape, Joeboy!" I whispered.
"Um!" he said. "No good go that way. Sandho break knees."
"Break his knees?" I said. "Yes, I should think he would! Can you
find the way back to the track?"
"Um! No. All thick; all dark. Come back little way. Sit down and
wait."
It was good counsel, and I sat fast--rather nervously, though--while
Joeboy backed the horse. And I had cause for my nervous sensation. In
fact, what followed proved that, in the darkness and confusion caused by
our ignorance, Joeboy backed the horse along the edge of the precipice
instead of right away from it; for there was a sudden slip, and one of
Sandho's hind-legs went down, making the poor beast give a frantic
plunge which nearly unseated me and drove Joeboy backwards. Then, as
the horse leaped up again, he made three or four bounds before standing
snorting and trembling; while I heard the rush and rattle of the
dislodged stones as they went hurtling down into the gorge.
"Um! Mustn't try any more," said Joeboy coolly as he took hold of
Sandho's bridle again, and petted and caressed the poor beast till he
was calm once more.
"He'll stand now," I said, rather huskily, as I mastered a strong desire
to get down. "Feel round for this edge, Joeboy, and find out which is
the safe way to go."
"Um!" grunted the black; and after giving Sandho a final pat on the
neck, he went down on all-fours and crawled away through the darkness so
silently that at the end of a few minutes I began to feel alarmed,
wondering whether he had made some terrible slip and gone over.
It was vain to argue with myself, for the shock I had received when the
horse slipped had not passed away. No doubt my previous experiences had
weakened me, and made me less able to fight against what was a very
ordinary trouble for a mountain rider.
Another five minutes passed away--minutes which seemed terribly
prolonged as I sat there in the darkness knowing I dared not stir, and
convinced that we must be upon a projecting bracket of rock whose shape
I could mentally picture, with only one narrow pathway off, and that
hidden by the mist. At last I could bear it no longer, and, leaning
forward to try and penetrate the darkness beyond the horse's head, I
called twice:
"Joeboy! Joeboy!"
"Joeboy here, Boss," came from behind me, and I uttered a sigh of relief
as the great fellow seemed to rise up close by and laid his hand upon my
arm.
"Where have you been?" I said in a querulous, excited way.
"Where, Boss Val say? Go all round. Better stop till morning."
"Yes," I said, with a sigh of relief. "Let's stop till morning. Here,
help me to get down."
I was obliged to ask for help, for the cold and damp air had made my
injured limbs so stiff and painful that I could hardly move them, and it
required a good strong effort to keep down a groan when I lowered myself
on to my feet, and then gladly sat down upon the damp rock.
I had no fear about Sandho, whose rein had been passed over his head and
allowed to hang down, for he had been trained to stand, and having
grazed for many hours, had no temptation to stir.
Joeboy soon settled himself close to my feet, and then began our long
and painful watching, hour after hour, through a night which seemed as
if it would never end. I had no desire to question the black, for his
action fully proved to me that our position must be perilous unless we
left the horse to shift for himself, and all this was sufficient to keep
off any desire for sleep; while a whisper from time to time was
sufficient to satisfy myself that my companion was as wakeful as I. As
the time passed on the mist seemed to thicken around us, with this
peculiarity striking me: it seemed to shut us completely in, so that not
a sound reached our ears, the silence being to me perfectly awful.
At last the morning was heralded by a faint puff or two of chilly air
which came and went again, till at last it settled into a soft breeze,
whose effects were soon apparent. All at once, as I looked up, a cloud
of mist became visible, then floated away; and as if by magic the sky,
of a soft dark grey, dotted with a faint star or two, came into sight.
Then day began to advance with rapid strides, and I found my notion of
our being upon a bracket of rock was not too far-fetched, for we were
upon a jutting-out promontory of some fifty feet across, from whose
edges the rock went down in places perpendicularly, in others with a
tremendously steep slope, while the way by which we came on was not
above half-a-dozen yards wide.
"You were very wise, Joeboy," I said as I rose to look round. "It would
have been madness to try leading Sandho off there in the fog."
"Um!" said Joe quietly; and then: "Look!"
He pointed away to our right, and, following his direction, I could here
and there make out the missing path down the pass, winding along in
rough zigzags till lost in the distance.
I was soon in my saddle again, and Joeboy led the horse off the perilous
place where we had passed the night, and then up the pass again for a
couple of hundred yards to where the track had borne off a little to the
right, but where we had kept on through the mist perfectly straight,
with nearly fatal results.
We looked anxiously up now as we turned off into the proper track, fully
expecting to see outposts of the Boers who had fired as we crossed the
head; but none were visible. So we began to descend as rapidly as we
could, but only at a walk, for the track was terribly rough.
It was only very gradually that the valley began to open out, our way at
times being along the stony bed of a mountain torrent; while right and
left the sides of what looked like a tremendous rift in the mountain,
split open in some terrific convulsion of nature, towered up.
We went along cheerily, for every yard carried us farther from risk of
capture by the Boers; and once we were well clear of the pass a couple
of days would, I felt sure, place us safely in the land of my countrymen
with whom the Boers were at war.
"How soon shall we stop and have breakfast, Joeboy?" I said as we were
passing through a perfect chaos of great stones which now hemmed us in
front and back. "No fear of seeing any Boers now."
The words had hardly left my lips when Sandho stopped short, and uttered
a sharp challenging neigh, which was answered from some distance in
front; and directly after, as I turned my horse sharply to get under the
cover of a huge block we had just passed, there came the loud clattering
of hoofs and a shout, as a party of some five-and-twenty well-mounted
horsemen cantered out to bar the way.
"Then they are there," I muttered as I swung Sandho round again. Joeboy
laid his left hand on the saddle, and away we cantered forward to
circumvent, if possible, the party in front whose horse had answered
Sandho's challenge.
The men behind yelled to us to stop. We paid no heed, but, regardless
of the stones, cantered on, Joeboy taking them at a stride in company
with Sandho's bounds.
The next minute I was looking upon fully twenty mounted riflemen right
across our path, and a glance right and left showed me that any attempt
to get round them would be an act of madness, for no horse could pass.
I turned in my saddle and looked back, to find that the party there were
closing in upon us; and for a moment I felt ready to turn Sandho and go
at them at full gallop, so as to try and cut my way through. I saw,
however, this would be a greater risk than going in the other direction.
"It's of no use, Joeboy," I said hoarsely; "we're trapped."
"Boss Val going to fight?" he said inquiringly, and as he asked his
question he fitted his long, elliptical shield well upon his left arm
and arranged his assagais handy for throwing.
"Two against all those, Joeboy? No; it would be folly."
There was no time for more words, for the party which had remained in
hiding till we had passed were closing in fast; and then a couple of
young men suddenly darted out from those in front, set spurs to their
horses, and seemed to race at us, leaping the stones in their way
steeplechase fashion.
In almost less time than I take to describe it, one of them, a
good-looking, frank young fellow in an officer's uniform, rose in his
stirrups and made a snatch at my arm; but, in answer to a touch of the
heel, Sandho leaped forward, and my would-be captor passed me, riding on
several horse-lengths before he could turn and come at me again; while,
by a quick leap aside, Joeboy avoided the man who came at him, and stood
with his back to a great stone, with his assagai raised to strike.
"Surrender, you Dutch scoundrel!" roared my antagonist, drawing his
sword, "or I'll cut you down."
"Dutch scoundrel yourself, you ugly idiot of a Boer!" I cried as
angrily, and I brought my rifle to bear upon him, holding it like a
pistol.
"Here, don't shoot," cried my adversary. "You don't talk like a Boer."
"Why should I?" said I. "But you're not a Dutchman--are you?"
"Hardly," he said, with a laugh.
"What are you, then?"
"Making a mistake, it seems," he replied.
"But your people are Boers?"
"They're going to beat them," he replied, "as soon as they get a chance.
Have you seen them up the Nek yonder?"
"Yes; I was running away from them. They were shooting at us last
night."
"Hi; Robsy! Steady there!" roared my new acquaintance. "Steady, I say!
Friends.--You, Black Jack, put down that spear, or it'll be the worse
for you.--It's all right, sir," he continued as a grey-haired,
military-looking man now rode up, followed by half-a-dozen more. "This
is an Englishman running away from the Boers."
"Then he's not an Englishman," said the officer sharply. "Here, arrest
this man.--Now then, give an account of yourself, for you look
confoundedly like a spy. Here, some one, cut that black fellow down if
he resists."
"Be quiet, Joeboy," I cried; "these are friends."
Joeboy dropped into a peaceable attitude and stood scowling at the
horsemen who surrounded us.
"Now, sir," said the officer, "why don't you speak?"
"Because you called me a spy," I said.
"Well, that seems to be what you are, you young scoundrel. How many of
your friends are there up yonder?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Say `sir' when you speak to a gentleman," cried the officer angrily,
"and no nonsense. Speak out--the truth if you don't want to be shot."
"Of course I don't want to be shot," I said scornfully; "and I'm not in
the habit of telling lies."
"How many Boers are there, then, up in the pass?"
"I don't know," I said. "We crept by them in the dark."
"Why? To come and see what forces we had here?"
"No," I said.
"Then why did you come?"
"To get away from the Boers."
"Why did you want to get away from them?" cried the officer, gazing at
me searchingly.