row had pierced you anywhere but through the boot you would have
been a dead man long since. Not this time--not this time."

"And the tiger, Dirk?" said Renshaw, with a faint smile. "You are
indeed a mighty hunter." For he remembered how often he had chaffed the
old Koranna on his much vaunted prowess as a hunter, little thinking in
what stead it should eventually stand himself.

"The tiger? Ja Baas. I will just go down and take off his skin before
it gets pitch dark. Lie you here and sleep. You are quite safe now,
Baas--quite safe. You will not die this time--_'Maghtaag_, no!"

So poor Renshaw sank back in a profound slumber, for he was thoroughly
exhausted. And all through the hours of darkness, while the wild
denizens of the waste bayed and howled among the grim and lonely
mountains, the little weazened old yellow man crouched there watching
beside him on that rocky ledge, so faithfully, so lovingly. His
comrade--the white man--his friend and equal--had deserted him--had left
him alone in that desert waste to die, and this runaway servant of his--
the degraded and heathen savage--clung to him in his extremity, watched
by his side ready to defend him if necessary at the cost of his own
life.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.

"EHEU!"

The homeward-bound mail steamer had hauled out from the Cape Town docks,
and lay moored to the jetty. In less than an hour she would cast loose
and start upon her voyage to Old England.

The funnel of the _Siberian_ shone like a newly blacked boot, as did her
plated sides, glistening with a coating of fresh paint. Her scuttles
flashed like eyes in the sun, and the gleam of her polished brasswork
was such as to cause semi-blindness for five minutes after you looked at
it. The white pennon of the Union Steamship Company with its red Saint
Andrew's cross fluttered at one tapering masthead; at the other the blue
peter.

On board of her all was wild confusion. Her decks were crowded with
passengers and their friends seeing them off, the latter outnumbering
the former six to one; with hawkers of curios and hawkers of books; with
quay porters and stewards bringing on and receiving passengers' luggage;
with innumerable hat-boxes, and wraps, and hold-alls, and other loose
gear; with squalling and rampageous children; with flurried and excited
females rushing hither and thither, and getting into everybody's way
while besieging every soul--from the chief officer to the cook's boy--