suing Matabele. He sat down upon a rock, cocked his
rifle, took a deep breath, and aimed and fired at the soldier who was
coming on carelessly in the open. Mr. Clifford was a good shot, and
shaken though he was, at this supreme moment his skill did not fail
him. The man was struck somewhere, for he staggered about and fell;
then slowly picked himself up, and began to hobble back towards his
companions, who, when they met him, stopped a minute to give him some
kind of assistance.

That halt proved their salvation, for it gave them time to make one last
despairing rush, and gain the brow of the poort. Not that this would
have saved them, however, since where they could go the Matabele could
follow, and there was still light by which the pursuers would have been
able to see to catch them. Indeed, the savages, having laid down the
wounded man, came on with a yell of rage, fifty or more of them.

Over the pass father and daughter struggled, Benita riding; after them,
perhaps sixty yards away, ran the Matabele, gathered in a knot now upon
the narrow, ancient road, bordered by steep hillsides.

Then suddenly from all about them, as it appeared to Benita, broke
out the blaze and roar of rifles, rapid and continuous. Down went the
Matabele by twos and threes, till at last it seemed as though but quite
a few of them were left upon their feet, and those came on no more;
they turned and fled from the neck of the narrow pass to the open slope
beyond.

Benita sank to the ground, and the next thing that she could remember
was hearing the soft voice of Jacob Meyer, who said:

"So you have returned from your ride, Miss Clifford, and perhaps it was
as well that the thought came from you to me that you wished me to meet
you here in this very place."

XVI

BACK AT BAMBATSE

How they reached Bambatse Benita never could remember, but afterwards
she was told that both she and her father were carried upon litters made
of ox-hide shields. When she came to her own mind again, it was to find
herself lying in her tent outside the mouth of the cave within the
third enclosure of the temple-fortress. Her feet were sore and her bones
ached, physical discomforts that brought back to her in a flash all the
terrors through which she had passed.

Again she saw the fierce pursuing Matabele; again heard their cruel
shouts and the answering crack of the rifles; again, amidst the din and
the gathering darkness, distinguished the gentle, forei