Wyvern awoke to consciousness in the pitch dark. His confused senses at first failed to convey any clear idea of what had happened; indeed the first shape his thoughts took was that he had been killed, and buried. The damp, earthy smell around him must be of course that of the grave, and yet he had suffered little or no pain. How had he been killed? Then suddenly and with a rush all came back—the lion-cubs and the snarl, his own fall, and the tumult overhead. He was not dead then, and now an intense joy took possession of him. All was not yet lost, no, not by any means. It must have been hours since he had fallen in there, and now, listening intently, he heard no sound outside. The Zulus must have given up the pursuit His fall into the covered-in donga had been the saving of him. Clearly the lioness had attacked the pursuing warriors and had either been slain by them or had delayed their advance to such an extent that they had not deemed it worth while to continue the pursuit; and here the strangeness of the repetition of incidents suggested itself. On a former occasion he had been spared the necessity of combating a formidable enemy in an unarmed state by the intervention of a snake, now the same thing had happened through the intervention of a lion.
And now the next thing was to get out of his friendly prison. Looking upward, the overhanging boughs and bush were faintly pierced by threads of golden moonlight; and he blessed that light for would it not make his way plain once up above? He guessed that the donga was of the same nature as the one at Seven Kloofs although here there was no river for it to open into, and to that end he slowly began to make his way downward. No easy matter was it however, in the pitchy gloom, but by dint of taking time, and exercising great care he at length came to where it opened into a kloof, and breathed the fresh air of night once more. Then he remembered that in his eagerness to get out he had left his knob-kerrie in the donga. He was now entirely unarmed.
Well, it was of no use going back to look for it. He would cut a cudgel presently, but in his eagerness to proceed, he was in no hurry to do that. He began to feel desperately hungry, but that caused him not much concern, for in the course of their wanderings together Fleetwood had put him up to what he had called “veldt-scoff,” to wit such roots and berries as were innocuous and would sustain life at a pinch. What was worse however was that a burning thirst had come upon him, and where to find water in what was, for all he knew, an utterly waterless waste, might become a most serious consideration. Still, there was no help for it. He must endure as long as he could, and a feeling of elation took hold of him as he thought of the awful experiences of the last twenty-four hours and the peril from which he had escaped; for now a sure and certain conviction was his that he had been spared with an object, and that object the happiness of Lalanté, and, incidentally, of himself.
And this spirit supported him as, hour after hour, he held on his way, now climbing the wearisome side of a steep kloof, only to find nothing but another on the further side, steering his way by the stars, and lo!—towards morning, in the waning moonlight, there rose the ridge of the Lebombo, right at hand—with its grand terraced heights of bosh and forest and krantz. And—better still—and his heart beat high with joy—he had come right upon the spot where the object of their search lay.
Yes. There was the black opening of the triangular cave about a mile ahead. In the dimness of the hour before dawn he recognised it. Hunger and thirst were forgotten now and he could have sang aloud in exultation; for within that black triangle lay hidden that which should bring him Lalanté.
In his haste to reach it he almost ran. Was it the same? At first a misgiving tortured his mind. There might be many such holes among the broken-ness of the foot-hills. No. There was the ridge from which the wretched myrmidon of Bully Rawson had fired at him. This was the place.
In his hurry he dived inside it. There was something in being on the very spot itself—besides now in the lightening dawn it would serve as a hiding-place in case any of his late enemies were still about or searching for him. The coolness of the hole was refreshing after his rapid and heating travel; so refreshing indeed that a sudden drowsiness came upon him, and he sank on the ground and fell fast asleep.
When he awoke the sun was high in the heavens. Gazing outward he could see the shimmer of heat arising from the stones. Then as he was looking around, reassuring himself as to the undoubted identity of the place, something moved. He could have sworn it was something or somebody trying to see within. Nonsense! The solitude and excitement of recent events had got upon his nerves. He looked steadily into the gloom of the interior for a moment, then turned suddenly to the entrance. Peering round the great boulder which constituted one side of this was the shaven, ringed head of a Zulu.