Chapter Eighteen.
The Fugitives.
“But—this is surely not the way to Gandela,” whispered Ancram, when they had got over about three miles.
“Quite right. It isn’t,” answered Peters. “We’ll get there kind of roundabout. You see, if by any chance our trap should miss fire, and they come after us, they’d head along the straight road to Gandela. Where’d we be then?”
“But,” objected Ancram, looking dubiously at the black line in front, just discernible in its loom against the stars, “isn’t this the line of forest where we heard the lions that evening? We are not going into that—at night, too—surely?”
“Right again—as to the first. For the second—wrong. We are.”
“But—the lions?”
“We must chance them.”
“I told you the great god Chance counted for a lot up-country, eh, Ancram?” cut in Lamont.
The other made no reply. What with those beastly Matabele behind, with their beastly assegai blades, keen and bright and hungering for his vitals, and a ramping and a roaring lion—or perhaps several—ready to spring out on him from those black depths, his heart was in his boots. He would have given something now to have taken Lamont’s advice and to have cleared right out of this infernal country. Let them but come through this safely, and then how blithely would he bid good-bye to Matabeleland, and all its abominable conditions of life, for ever.