Immediately after leaving the grove of trees, the road commenced to climb the first rises of the Mau escarpment. As we mounted higher up the hillside, the view behind us opened out into a grand panorama of the two valleys and their sentinel volcanoes, with the smoke haze hanging over all. For a time, those of us who were in front rode half sideways in the saddle, looking back over the way we had come and over the district we had grown to know so well. Then we crossed a small, level park that formed the crest of the first hill, and as we moved down the western slope the view behind us disappeared and the new country spread before us.
Kearton was riding with his head sunk on his chest like a sick man. Gobbet asked if anything was wrong with him.
"Nothing bad; too much heat this morning, likely."
"Want to hunt a bit of shade and lie up awhile? "
"No, I'll go on."
Gobbet shrugged his shoulders. "You're the judge," he said.
Hill after hill stretched away in front to the one upstanding kopje that marked the top of the Mau. The district was wooded with small, twisted trees, and the fire had crossed here, so that the ground was black and the air smelled stronger of burning.
Presently Means stopped. "I'd better wait till the Colonel comes along," he explained. "The Colonel don't carry any weapons."
Loveless stopped with him, and, as Ulyate was somewhere behind with the ox-wagons and porters, this left Kearton, Gobbet, and myself to ride on by ourselves. For a mile or more the road lifted and dipped with monotonous regularity, and the burnt land was still on either hand, without a sign of life anywhere to be seen. So when the sun really began to decline toward the west, Gobbet, who had once been assistant manager of the Alhambra Music Hall in Brighton, told the story of Harry Lauder and the liquid air biscuits, and it seemed to do Kearton good. Kearton had just told Gobbet to quit his lying, when all three of us realized that for the last half minute we had been unconsciously listening to the beat of a galloping horse on the road behind.
The next instant Ulyate pulled up in a cloud of dust.