horses. To regain this would take several hours. It was frightfully
rugged and tangled country, and they had but an hour of daylight left.
Moreover a tremendous thunderstorm was working up, and one that, judging
by the heavy aspect of the clouds, and the brooding sense of oppression
in the atmosphere, threatened to last the best part of the night. For
the second, they had every reason to believe that these wild and broken
fastnesses of bush and rock held the lurking remnants of the Gcaleka
bands who were still under arms, and should these discover the presence
of intruders, the position of the four men, dismounted, scantily
supplied with food, and hampered with their worse than useless charge,
would be serious indeed.

The latter they still deemed it necessary to keep carefully secured.
His transition to the upper air had effected a curious change in him.
He was no longer violent. He seemed dazed, utterly subdued. He would
blink and shut his eyes, as if the light hurt them. Then he would open
them again and stare about him with a gaze of the most utter
bewilderment. A curious feature in his demeanour was that the world at
large seemed to excite his interest rather than its living inhabitants.
In these, as represented by his rescuers, he seemed to evince no
interest at all. His gaze would wander past them, as though unaware of
their presence, to the broad rugged river-valley, with its soaring
_krantzes_ and savage forest-clad depths, as if he had awakened in a new
world. And indeed he had. Think of it! Seven or eight months spent in
utter darkness; seven or eight months without one glimmer of the blessed
light of Heaven; seven or eight months in the very bowels of the earth,
in starvation and filth, among living horrors which had turned his
brain; the only glint of light, the only sound of the human voice
vouchsafed to him being on those occasions when his barbarous tormentors
came to taunt him and bring him his miserable food! Small wonder that
the free air, the light, and the spreading glories of Nature, had a
dazing, subduing effect on the poor lunatic.

His own safety necessitated the continuance of his bonds--that of his
rescuers, that he should be kept securely gagged. It would not do, out
of mistaken kindness, to run any risks; to put it in the poor fellow's
power to break forth into one of his paroxysms of horrible howls, under
circumstances when their lives might depend upon secrecy and silence.
It