Why had they not murdered me then and there? I thought. Could it be that they were taking me to some secure place where they might do it at their leisure, and hide away my body in some hole or cave where there was not the smallest chance of it ever being found, and so bearing witness against themselves? It looked like it—and the idea made my blood run cold with a very real and genuine fear.
All thoughts of rescue—of immediate rescue—I was forced to put aside; delayed rescue would be too late. My comrades would hardly succeed in spooring us in the dark, and it was quite dark now; moreover, they were but three, and judging from the varying voices of those who held me, the latter must be fairly numerous. No, the situation was hopeless—abjectly hopeless. Half-dead with fatigue and semi-suffocation, my mind a prey to the most acute humiliation and self-reproach, I stumbled on—how I did so I hardly know. At last I could bear it no longer. They might kill me if they liked, but not another step would I stir until that horrible suffocating gag was removed.
Something of this must have struck them too, for after a muttered consultation, they began fumbling at the cattle thongs with which I was bound, and lo; the filthy blanket was dragged off my head, and I sat drinking in the fresh night air in long draughts.
“No talk—no call out,” said a voice at my side. “You talk—you call out, then—so.”
It was not too dark to see the significant drawing of the hand across the speaker’s throat by which the injunction was emphasised. The latter I judged it advisable to obey—for the present at any rate.
In this way we kept on through the night; it seemed to me for hours. I could make out the loom of the heights against the star-gemmed sky, and noticed that it narrowed considerably as though we were threading a long defile. More than once I stumbled, and not having the use of my hands to save myself, fell flat on my face, to the brutal amusement of the ruffians in whose power I was. I deemed it inadvisable to look about me too much, but could make out quite a dozen forms in front of me, and that there were plenty behind, I gathered from the hum of muffled voices. Indeed, another sense than that of sight went to confirm any conjecture as to their numbers, for the sweet night air was constantly poisoned by a reek of rancid grease and musky, foetid humanity. But of the three horses I could now see no sign.
At last a brief halt was made, evidently at some known water-hole or spring, for soon one of them emerged from the bush bearing a great calabash, and the sound of the splashing liquid as it was poured into bowls was as very music to my ears. The long, rough, forced march; the dash and excitement which had preceded it, had done their work. I was simply parched with thirst, and said so.
Thereupon the English-speaking Kafir came towards me with a smaller bowl. He put it to my lips, but before I could reach it the brute withdrew it again and dashed the contents into my face.
“That all the water you get,” he laughed.
It was too much. Even the fear of immediate vengeance counted for nothing at that moment. My arms were secured but my legs were not. Throwing myself backward as I sat I let out with these in such wise as to plant both feet, with the force of a battering ram, right in the pit of the stomach of my jeering tormentor as he bent over me laughing. He rebounded like an indiarubber ball, rolled half a dozen yards, and lay writhing and groaning and gasping—while I, of course, made up my mind to instant death.