“What an experience!” said Sellon, whom this story, told amid the dark and savage surroundings of their fireless camp, considerably impressed. “You must have seen some uncommonly queer things in your time, Fanning?”
The other smiled slightly.
“Well, yes, I have. This is a land of strange experiences, although prosaic enough on the surface. I hope none will befall us before we get home again—always excepting the strange experience of finding ourselves rich men in the shape of what we are looking for.”
“By the way, whereabouts was it you were attacked that time? Anywhere near here?”
“About half an hour’s ride further on. The poort narrows very much, and the cliffs are not nearly so high. It was just sundown, and I was jogging quietly along homewards very much down on my luck over the third failure, when bang came a shower of assegais and arrows and kerries, hurtling about the rocks like a young hailstorm. I spurred up then, you bet; but the ground is beastly rough, as you’ve seen, and the enemy could get along as fast as I could—besides, I had a brute of a pack-horse that wouldn’t lead properly. They chased me down to where we first entered this defile, and by that time it was dark—luckily for me. As it was, I only shook them off by sacrificing the pack-horse.”
“Now, how the deuce did you manage that?”
“Why, I knew they’d reckon on me taking the shortest cut for the river. So when I got out of the poort at the bottom of the turret-head mountain—you remember that steep little slope where your horse turned a somersault—I put on pace a little so as to get a start. Then I stuck a burr under the pack-horse’s tail and cast him loose. Away he went, slanting off into the other poort, which seems to lead towards the river, while I lay low. I could see the devils skipping down the poort on his heels, in high old glee. In the night I moved on again, striking due north, and after making nearly a week’s cast—and nearly dying of hunger and thirst—I fetched up at the drift we came through day before yesterday. And, by the way, I think old Greenway was wrong in saying, ‘Beware the schelm Bushmen.’ Those chaps struck me as more like Korannas. There were some quite big fellows among them.”
The time and place were singularly appropriate to the narration of wild and perilous experiences. But this latest in no wise tended to raise the listener’s spirits. Sellon was not of the stuff of which adventurers are made. He was keen enough on this expedition and the dazzling possibilities it held out. But he didn’t want to be killed or wounded if he could help it. No such thing as going into danger out of pure love of excitement found a place in his philosophy. He was not imaginative, yet the idea of being struck down by an unseen enemy, or worse still, perhaps, dragging himself away mortally wounded to die like an animal in a hole or cave, in the heart of this frightful desert, a multitude of foul and loathsome beasts howling for his blood, per adventure waiting till mortal weakness should embolden them to pounce on him before life was extinct—these considerations struck home to him now, and fairly made him shiver.
“By-the-by, Sellon,” said the careless voice of his companion, “do you think you’d be able to find your way back to the river again?”
“Now, why the deuce should you ask that, Fanning?” was the testy rejoinder.