The native, deprived of Gerard’s support, is seen to be thrown, as it were, with his face downward on the current. Something is holding him back, something which has him fast by the legs; but for it, he would be shot out over the falls. He shouts something in his own language.
“By jingo! It’s just as I said,” exclaims one of the men. “He’s anchored.”
“Anchored?” wonderingly echoes Gerard, who, beyond being very much out of breath, is none the worse for his narrow escape.
“Yes, anchored. He says he’s got a lot of reims and truck tangled round his legs, and it’s hitched in something at the bottom of the river. That’s what’s holding him back; and a mighty good thing it is for you, young fellow, as well as for him. You’d have been pounded dust at the bottom of the fall long before this.”
The while the speaker has been fixing a knife to the noosed ram, in such wise that the distressed native shall be able to detach it and cut himself loose below water. A warning shout—the noose flies outward—the man catches it without difficulty, for the distance is not great. Then, having made it fast beneath his armpits, he dives under the surface, while the two on the bank—the three in fact, for Gerard now helps to man the line—keep the ram taut. The latter shakes and quivers for a moment like a line with a heavy fish at the end; then the ringed head rises.
“Haul away—he’s clear!” is the cry. And in a moment the native is dragged safe to the bank and landed beside his rescuers.
Having recovered breath, he proceeded to account for the origin of his mishap. He was on his way to a neighbouring kraal, to obtain possession of a horse which he had left there. He was carrying a headstall and a couple of reims for this purpose, and, thinking it a trifle shorter to ford the river below the drift than at it, had gone into the water accordingly. But the current proved stronger as well as deeper than he had expected. He had been swept off his feet, and then the reims had somehow or other got entangled round his legs, which were practically tied together, so that he could not swim. It must have been the headstall which, dragging along the bottom, had so opportunely anchored him.
“Well, it’s the tallest thing I’ve seen in a good many years,” said one of the men. “The very tallest—eh, George?”
“Ja, that’s so!” laconically assented George, beginning to shred up a fragment of Boer tobacco in the hollow of his hand.
The men were transport-riders, travelling with their waggons, which accounted for the prompt production of the long reim which had borne so essential a part in the rescue. They had just come over the rise in time to take in the situation, and with the readiness of resource which characterises their class, were prompt to act accordingly. But the object in which Gerard’s interest was centred was the man whom he had been instrumental in saving from a most horrible death.