he consider such a meeting a safe one or likely to result in the
furtherance of his object. Moreover, he was deadly tired. He had slept
but little of late, what with the anxiety of their position and the
excitement of anticipating his own attempt--and not at all the previous
night. He would find some sequestered hiding-place and take the rest he
so greatly needed; would sleep, if possible, until evening. Then he
would contrive to cross the river, and travel the night through. Thanks
to the repugnance of Zulus to being abroad during the hours of darkness,
he stood a pretty good chance of moving unmolested, and by morning he
ought to have put a wide enough space between the Igazipuza and himself,
to feel comparatively safe.

Acting upon this idea, he started off along the river-bank to find a
snug and convenient place of concealment; and when he had gone about a
mile, wending carefully and quietly so as to disturb as little as
possible the very birds, keeping well under cover of the bush, he found
one. It was a small hollow, in the midst of which rose a great boulder.
The heat and the exercise had dried his clothes and restored
circulation to his veins, and now at the foot of this boulder where the
sun struck in dry and warm, Gerard lay down.

The sense of restfulness was indescribably delicious. His mind in its
dreamy half-wakeful state went off into retrospect. Could it, indeed,
be barely a year since he had received the twofold welcome news that he
was to leave school immediately, and proceed--scarcely less
immediately--to shift for himself in a far colony; that dream of Utopia
to the average English boy, that too frequently rough awakening? He saw
himself again on board the _Amatikulu_, gazing with wonder and a touch
of mysterious awe upon the green shores of his "promised land." Once
more he was leading the old disillusioning monotonous and rather sordid
life at Anstey's, and an uneasy longing to take that specious rascal by
the throat--for he was quite asleep now--was forgotten in the more
pleasant vision of May Kingsland. And then his dreams took no further
shape--merging into the complete unconsciousness of the more restful
form of sound slumber.

The hours followed each other, and even the live creatures of the
wilderness ceased to fear the motionless sleeping form of the young
adventurer, but a year ago a hearty unsophisticated English schoolboy,
now the bearer of his own life and the lives of other