“It’s all right,” said M‘Crae; “they’re firing on chance, and they’re firing high. They always fire high. Are you rested now? Come along.”
Strangely enough, she found herself no longer tired. Her heart ceased its feeble flutterings. She had reached her “second wind.” Now they moved faster than ever. Even though the bush never thinned, M‘Crae seemed able to find a twisting way between the thorns; almost as if he had planned the route exactly, yard for yard, and were following it exactly, never changing pace nor breaking stride.
Suddenly, in front of them, the bush grew thinner, and Eva was thankful, for it seemed to her that now they were no longer shut in a cage of thorns. A moment later they emerged upon the edge of a wide slade of grasses, very beautiful and silvery in the moon. For a full mile or more it stretched before them, unmoved by any breath of wind, and the night so softened the contours of the black bush which lay about it that a strange magic might have transported them without warning to some homely English meadow, set about with hedges of hawthorn and dreaming beneath the moon. No scene could have been further removed from her idea of Africa and its violence.
“We must keep to the thorn,” whispered M‘Crae.
She obeyed. But here, on the edge of the bush, where the lower branches of the thorn-trees had pushed out into sunlight and more luxuriantly thriven, it was not easy going. They moved slowly, and in a little while Eva’s dress was torn in many places. Thorns from the low branches tore at her back and remained embedded in her flesh. She was very miserable, but never, never tired. In the bush on their left they heard a melancholy, drooping note. It was the cry of a bird with which Eva had grown very familiar at Luguru, and she scarcely noticed it until M‘Crae stopped dead.
“It was a hornbill,” she said.
“Yes. . . . But a hornbill never calls at night.”
While he spoke the call was echoed from the woody edge beyond their slade of grasses. Again on their left: and this time very near.
“An escort,” said M‘Crae. “We must get closer in.”
“Towards the sound?”