“Why do you think that, Mr Driffield?”
“I don’t know. It occurs to me as quite within the possibilities. The great thing is—we know he wasn’t killed there, and we know that two others were. Lamont understands natives thoroughly—I could see that—and I fancy I know a little about them myself. Look, too, how he engineered the old witch-doctor the day of the race meeting. That was a great piece of nerve and gumption combined. By Jove! I shouldn’t wonder in the least if he were to make it worth their while to let him skip. Somehow I’m almost certain he’ll turn up again quite jolly.”
“If only I could think so!” she would reply sadly.
Every day she would visit the wounded men, who were lying in a temporary hospital within the precincts of the laager, and this she never missed. They had been wounded in her defence, she declared, and anything she could do to brighten the weariness and pain of their enforced detention should be done. And brighten it she did, and her daily visit was looked forward to with such eagerness that more than one poor fellow declared that it almost made it worth while being knocked out. But Jim Steele growled mightily.
“To think I should be logged up here, when Peters and the rest are looking for the captain. These infernal sawboneses are no damn good at all. Eh, Strange?”
“No? Only to save you by a miracle from having to part with your hoof, Jim,” answered the Buluwayo surgeon tranquilly. “That no good, eh?”
For the other had been shot in the ankle, and had just escaped the necessity of amputation by something like a miracle, as the doctor had said.
“Well, get it all right again sharp, that’s what I want,” growled the big fellow, who was terribly hipped and impatient under his enforced rest. “Get me out of this in ten days, Strange, and I’ll double your blooming fees—Dawson’s too.”
“If you were to multiply them by twenty or twenty hundred, Jim, it couldn’t be done,” answered the surgeon tranquilly. “Moreover, not with my consent, nor Dawson’s either,”—the latter was the Gandela medico,—“do you put that foot to the ground under six weeks. No, it’s no use cussing, none at all. Besides, here’s Miss Vidal just coming in, and she might hear you.”
There was one who was variously affected by the disappearance of Lamont—one of whom we have lost sight of for a little, and that one was Ancram. When he awoke from his slumber of exhaustion to find the relief party gone, at first he had affected great concern. Why had not someone awakened him? Of course he would have joined it. As a matter of fact, he was overjoyed that no one had, for he had no stomach for fighting, and had spent the last three days heartily wishing he had taken Lamont’s advice and cleared out of the country in time. More than ever did he congratulate himself on his escape, when the experiences of the relief party became known, but it was with dismay that he learned the disappearance of its leader. For Ancram was getting desperately hard up, and would soon not know which way to turn. He was not much liked among those into whose midst he had come. Lamont might have helped him—probably would—not by reason of what he could tell—the prowess of the missing man was too much in the air for that—but for old acquaintance’ sake; and now Lamont had disappeared.