At last, when we had pushed our way some distance in, we heard a wild
cry from outside. It was Doolittle's voice. "Quick! quick! out again!
The man will escape! He has come back on his tracks, and rounded!"

I saw our mistake at once. We had left our companion out there alone,
rendered helpless by the care of all three horses.

Colebrook said never a word. He was a man of action. He turned with
instinctive haste, and followed our own spoor back again with his hands
and knees to the opening in the thicket by which we had first entered.

Before we could reach it, however, two shots rang out clear in the
direction where we had left poor Doolittle and the horses. Then a sharp
cry broke the stillness--the cry of a wounded man. We redoubled our
pace. We knew we were outwitted.

When we reached the open, we saw at once by the uncertain light what had
happened. The fugitive was riding away on my own little sorrel,--riding
for dear life; not back the way we came from Salisbury, but sideways
across the veldt towards Chimoio and the Portuguese seaports. The other
two horses, riderless and terrified, were scampering with loose heels
over the dark plain. Doolittle was not to be seen; he lay, a black lump,
among the black bushes about him.

We looked around for him, and found him. He was severely, I may even say
dangerously, wounded. The bullet had lodged in his right side. We had to
catch our two horses, and ride them back with our wounded man, leading
the fugitive's mare in tow, all blown and breathless. I stuck to
the fugitive's mare; it was the one clue we had now against him. But
Sebastian, if it WAS Sebastian, had ridden off scot-free. I understood
his game at a glance. He had got the better of us once more. He would
make for the coast by the nearest road, give himself out as a settler
escaped from the massacre, and catch the next ship for England or the
Cape, now this coup had failed him.

Doolittle had not seen the traitor's face. The man rose from the bush,
he said, shot him, seized the pony, and rode off in a second with
ruthless haste. He was tall and thin, but erect--that was all the
wounded scout could tell us about his assailant. And THAT was not enough
to identify Sebastian.

All danger was over. We rode back to Salisbury. The first words Hilda
said when she saw me were: "Well, he has got away from you!"

"Yes; how did you know?"

"I read it in your step. But I guessed as much before. He is so very
keen; an