Granville Kelmscott gazed at him, there in the grey dawn, in unspeakable surprise. Not shoot at a negro! In such straits, too, as theirs! And this rebuke had come to him—from the mouth of the murderer!
Turn it over as he might, Granville couldn’t understand it.
The Barolong ran along on the crest of the ridge, still at the top of his speed, without seeming to notice them in the gloom of the valley. Presently, he disappeared over the edge to southward. Guy was right, after all. He wasn’t in pursuit of them. More likely he was only a runaway slave, taking advantage, like themselves, of King Khatsua’s absence.
CHAPTER XXXV. — PERILS BY THE WAY.
Three weeks later, two torn and tattered, half-starved Europeans sat under a burning South African sun by the dry bed of a shrunken summer torrent. It was in the depths of Namaqua land, among the stony Karoo; and the fugitives were straggling, helplessly and hopelessly, seaward, thirsty and weary, through a half-hostile country, making their marches as best they could at dead of night and resting by day where the natives would permit them.
Their commissariat had indeed been a lean and hungry one. Though they carried many thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds about their persons, they had nothing negotiable with which to buy food or shelter from the uncivilized Namaquas. Ivory, cloth, and beads were the currency of the country. No native thereabouts would look for a moment at their little round nobs of water-worn pebbles. The fame of the diamond fields hadn’t penetrated as yet so far west in the land as to have reached to the huts of the savage Namaquas.
And now their staying power was almost worn out Granville Kelmscott lay down on the sandy soil with a wild gesture of despair. All around were bare rocks and the dry sweltering veldts, covered only with round stones and red sand and low bushy vegetation.
“Waring,” he said feebly, in a very faint voice, “I wish you’d leave me and go on by yourself. I’m no good any more. I’m only a drag upon you. This fever’s too bad for me to stand much longer. I can never pull through to the coast alive. I’ve no energy left, were it even to try. I’d like to lie down here and die where I sit. Do go and leave me.”