ora da Ferreira had struck in its fall, and
the necklace Benita wore to-day was torn from her--a stunted mimosa grew
in some cleft of the rock. To mark the crocodile run itself she bent
down a bunch of reeds, and having first lit a few Tandstickor brimstone
matches and thrown them about inside of it, that the smell of them might
scare the beast should it wish to return, she set her lantern behind a
stone near to the mouth of the hole.

Then Benita began her journey which, when the river was high, it would
not have been possible for her to make except by swimming. As it was,
a margin of marsh was left between her and the steep, rocky side of the
mount from which the great wall rose, and through this she made her way.
Never was she likely to forget that walk. The tall reeds dripped
their dew upon her until she was soaked; long, black-tailed
finches--saccaboolas the natives call them--flew up undisturbed, and
lobbed away across the river; owls flitted past and bitterns boomed at
the coming of the dawn. Great fish splashed also in the shallows, or
were they crocodiles? Benita hoped not--for one day she had seen enough
of crocodiles.

It was all very strange. Could she be the same woman, she wondered,
who not a year before had been walking with her cousins down Westbourne
Grove, and studying Whiteley's windows? What would these cousins say
now if they could see her, white-faced, large-eyed, desperate, splashing
through the mud upon the unknown banks of the Zambesi, flying from death
to death!

On she struggled, above her the pearly sky in which the stars were
fading, around her the wet reeds, and pervading all the heavy low-lying
mists of dawn. She was past the round of the walls, and at length stood
upon dry ground where the Matabele had made their camp. But in that fog
she saw no Matabele; probably their fires were out, and she chanced
to pass between the sentries. Instinctively, more than by reason, she
headed for that hillock upon which she had seen the white man's waggon,
in the vague hope that it might still be there. On she struggled, still
on, till at length she blundered against something soft and warm, and
perceived that it was an ox tied to a trek-tow, beyond which were other
oxen and a white waggon-cap.

So it _was_ still there! But the white man, where was he? Through the
dense mist Benita crept to the disselboom. Then, seeing and hearing
nothing, she climbed to the voorkissie and kneeling on it, separated