In a moment his pony was lying on the ground, and Jack was crawling, rifle in hand, towards the stranger.
“I could pick him off from here,” he thought, lying flat upon his stomach and taking a steady aim at the man’s head, “but he doesn’t seem to have noticed me, and I hate the idea of shooting a poor fellow without giving him a chance of making a fight for it. Besides, for all I know he may be an Englishman. Perhaps it is Riley. He left Mafeking with despatches a week before I got there, but he was new to the game, and might easily have come to grief. But otherwise he ought to have reached our camp long before this.”
Jack lowered his rifle, and, removing his hat from his head, looked long and carefully at the stranger through his glasses. To all appearance he might be either a Boer or an Englishman, for he wore a ragged sombrero on his head and a tattered shirt on his back. His face was turned in the opposite direction from Jack, and every now and again he raised himself upon his elbow and looked out across the veldt. Then, as if with considerable effort, he dragged himself a few paces forward and looked out again.
“I believe that fellow is wounded,” murmured Jack. “At any rate I’ll get closer to him, and keep my gun ready in case of emergencies.”
Crawling stealthily forward, he made a slight détour, and soon approached the stranger within fifty yards. At this distance his appearance was certainly in favour of his being English, and taking up a position behind a screen of leaves, Jack called out: “Hallo, there!”
Instantly the stranger turned his head, and stared about him in bewilderment. Then he answered, in a tremulous voice: “Hullo! Help me for God’s sake!”
There was now no doubt that he was a comrade in distress, and, jumping to his feet, Jack ran across towards him, only to find that the poor fellow had fainted. Placing him on his back, Jack sprinkled some water on his face, and soon had the satisfaction of bringing him round.
“Who are you, old chap?” he asked.
“I’m Riley, from Mafeking,” the injured man answered.
“I was on my way to Lord Roberts, and reached here four days ago. I’d have got through safe enough if I hadn’t had the bad luck to be bitten by a snake. There is the beast over there. I put my blanket down and left it, to take the pony down to that stream behind the kopje, and on returning and seating myself at the end of the blanket, the brute suddenly sat up on his tail in front of me and struck before I could get away. You can see he hit my gaiter, scratched all down it, and then just managed to get to my skin through the canvas shoe I was wearing, owing to my boots having given out.”