He glared at the animal with hatred, not altogether unreasonable. For when he had been travelling about four hours, and was uneasily beginning to realise that he was lost, he had unslung his vulcanite water-bottle—which nobody travelling up-country should ever be without—and had placed it on the ground while off-saddling. But something had startled the stupid brute, which in its blundering, foolish plunges had put its foot clean through that indispensable receptacle, of course shattering it like an eggshell, and spilling every drop of the contents on the thirsty, sucking soil. He had intended, when the worst came to the worst, to kill the animal, and assuage his torturing thirst with the draught of its blood; and the worst had come to the worst.
Some instinct must have lurked within that stupid brain, for now neither cursing nor coaxing, tried alternately, would induce the horse to come within reach. Exhausted as it was, it would still slue round, jerking the bridle away with every attempt to seize it. Once, in desperation, he seized a stirrup leather, hoping to gain the saddle that way, and recover the bridle-rein, only to result in a nasty fall against a mopani stem.
Hideous and thick were the curses which oozed from the swollen lips of the despairing man, as he saw even this last chance of life—loathsome, revolting as it was—reft from him. He had no firearms; his six-shooter he had left for repairs at Fort Pagadi, and not being able to find the smith at the early hour of his start, with characteristic impatience he had come on without it: otherwise the difficulty would have been settled then and there. But as he resumed his stumbling way, the horse, apparently appreciating human companionship in that wild solitude, continued to follow him, though persistently defying all effort to secure it.
He glanced upward. The sun was throwing long rays now along the tree-tops. Another night would soon be here, bringing with it, however, no abatement of heat and thirst and torment—Ah! h!
The deep-drawn, raucous sigh that escaped the man can hardly be conveyed. In front the trees were thinning. There was light beyond. The road, of course! He had reached the road again, which he should never have left. There it would be hard but that some traveller or transport rider should find him, even if he had not the strength to drag himself on to the nearest human habitation.
With renewed strength, which he thought had left him for ever, he hurried forward. The line of light grew lighter. The trees ended. No road was this, but a stony dry sluit. It would run a torrent after a thunderstorm, but this was not the time of thunderstorms, wherefore now it was as dry as the hard rock that constituted its bed. The wretched wanderer uttered an exclamation that was half groan, half curse, but was expressive of the very acme of human despair.
He turned again to try and coax his horse within catching distance. But this time the animal threw up its head, snorted, and, with an energy he had not thought it still to possess, turned and trotted off into the depths of the mopani, its head in the air, and the bridle-rein swinging clear of the ground. With another awful curse the man fell forward on the baking earth, and lay, half in, half out of the line of trees which ended at the sluit.
He lay motionless. The sun was off the opening, fortunately for him, or its terrible focussed rays, falling on the back of his neck, would have ended his allotted time then and there. But—what was this? On the line of his track, moving towards him, shadows were stealing—two of them.
Shadows? They were like such, as they flitted from tree to tree—two evil-looking Makalaka—with their glistening bodies naked save for a skin mútya and a collar of wooden beads, with their smooth, shaven heads and broad noses and glistening eyeballs. And now each gripped more tightly an assegai and a native axe, as nearer and nearer, like gliding demons, they stole noiselessly upon the prostrate and exhausted white man.
The latter had not been so completely alone as he had supposed. Yard upon yard, mile upon mile, his footsteps had been dogged by these human—or hardly human—sleuth-hounds. Their ghoul-like exultation when they had discovered another lost white man, within what was to them as its web is to a spider, had known no bounds. Another! Yes. For more than one traveller had disappeared already within that trackless thirst-belt, never to be heard of again either in life or death.