odile
get out? Stooping down she searched, and perceived, a few yards to the
right of the door, a hole that looked as though it were water-worn.
Now Benita thought that she understood. The rock was softer here, and
centuries of flood had eaten it away, leaving a crack in the stratum
which the crocodiles had found out and enlarged. Down she went on her
hands and knees, and thrusting the lantern in front of her, crept along
that noisome drain, for this was what it resembled. And now--oh! now she
felt air blowing in her face, and heard the sound of reeds whispering,
and water running, and saw hanging like a lamp in the blue sky,
a star--the morning star! Benita could have wept, she could have
worshipped it, yet she pushed on between rocks till she found herself
among tall reeds, and standing in water. She had gained the banks of the
Zambesi.

Instantly, by instinct as it were, Benita extinguished her candle,
fearing lest it should betray her, for constant danger had made her very
cunning. The dawn had not yet broken, but the waning moon and the stars
gave a good light. She paused to look. There above her towered the
outermost wall of Bambatse, against which the river washed, except at
such times as the present, when it was very low.

So she was not in the fortress as she had hoped, but without it, and oh!
what should she do? Go back again? How would that serve her father or
herself? Go on? Then she might fall into the hands of the Matabele whose
camp was a little lower down, as from her perch upon the top of the cone
she had seen that poor white man do. Ah! the white man! If only he lived
and she could reach him! Perhaps they had not killed him after all. It
was madness, yet she would try to discover; something impelled her to
take the risk. If she failed and escaped, perhaps then she might call to
the Makalanga, and they would let down a rope and draw her up the wall
before the Matabele caught her. She would not go back empty-handed, to
die in that dreadful place with her poor father. Better perish here in
the sweet air and beneath the stars, even if it were upon a Matabele
spear, or by a bullet from her own pistol.

She looked about her to take her bearings in case it should ever be
necessary for her to return to the entrance of the cave. This proved
easy, for a hundred or so feet above her--where the sheer face of the
cliff jutted out a little, at that very spot indeed on which tradition
said that the body of the Sen