“No, I don’t,” retorted the other. “It’s about the only thing I’m safe not to forget! Well, Kobo, when shall we get to this kloof of yours—to-night, or to-morrow morning?”
“To-morrow,” said the Bechuana, “’bout ten o’clock, if all well.”
They resumed their journey before daybreak, in no way abating their speed, though the stamina of the three younger travellers seemed now on the point of giving way. They struggled on, however, hour after hour, until the sun began to mount high in the heavens, and the heat to grow every moment more intolerable. Then, suddenly, Kobo pointed with his finger to a narrow ravine, richly wooded with trees of every variety of leaf, running between two lofty mountain ridges, and exclaimed—
“That Koodoo’s kloof. We safe now!”
Another quarter of an hour brought them within the shelter of the noble trees, which extended their network of delicious shade overhead. Kobo led them on by a path, which gradually sloped downwards for nearly half a mile, till the sound of running water broke upon their ears, and they found themselves on the margin of a broad and rapid river.
Chapter Twenty.
A Raft—Fate of Maomo—The Island—A Strange Apparition—A Hippopotamus Hunt—The Beautiful Stranger—Nick again—The Hippopotamus Trap.
“Well, we are here,” said Frank, an hour or so afterwards as they still lay on the grassy bank of the stream, enjoying alike the rest to their limbs, and the delicious coolness of the river breeze. “We are here, thanks to you, Kobo, for the same. But how we are to get across beats me altogether. This is not a narrow channel over which you could drop a tree; and if it had been, the cliffs opposite are two or three hundred feet high, and go down straight into the water. It is too deep to ford, and too rapid to swim, even if there was a landing-place on the other side, which there is not.”