The deep-drawn, raucous sigh that escaped the man can hardly be
conveyed. In front the trees were thinning. There was light beyond.
The road, of course! He had reached the road again, which he should
never have left. There it would be hard but that some traveller or
transport rider should find him, even if he had not the strength to drag
himself on to the nearest human habitation.

With renewed strength, which he thought had left him for ever, he
hurried forward. The line of light grew lighter. The trees ended. No
road was this, but a stony dry _sluit_. It would run a torrent after a
thunderstorm, but this was not the time of thunderstorms, wherefore now
it was as dry as the hard rock that constituted its bed. The wretched
wanderer uttered an exclamation that was half groan, half curse, but was
expressive of the very acme of human despair.

He turned again to try and coax his horse within catching distance. But
this time the animal threw up its head, snorted, and, with an energy he
had not thought it still to possess, turned and trotted off into the
depths of the mopani, its head in the air, and the bridle-rein swinging
clear of the ground. With another awful curse the man fell forward on
the baking earth, and lay, half in, half out of the line of trees which
ended at the _sluit_.

He lay motionless. The sun was off the opening, fortunately for him, or
its terrible focussed rays, falling on the back of his neck, would have
ended his allotted time then and there. But--what was this? On the
line of his track, moving towards him, shadows were stealing--two of
them.

Shadows? They were like such, as they flitted from tree to tree--two
evil-looking Makalaka--with their glistening bodies naked save for a
skin _mutya_ and a collar of wooden beads, with their smooth, shaven
heads and broad noses and glistening eyeballs. And now each gripped
more tightly an assegai and a native axe, as nearer and nearer, like
gliding demons, they stole noiselessly upon the prostrate and exhausted
white man.

The latter had not been so completely alone as he had supposed. Yard
upon yard, mile upon mile, his footsteps had been dogged by these
human--or hardly human--sleuth-hounds. Their ghoul-like exultation when
they had discovered another lost white man, within what was to them as
its web is to a spider, had known no bounds. _Another_! Yes. For more
than one traveller had disappeared already within that trackless
thi