about them myself. Look, too, how he
engineered the old witch-doctor the day of the race meeting. That was a
great piece of nerve and gumption combined. By Jove! I shouldn't
wonder in the least if he were to make it worth their while to let him
skip. Somehow I'm almost certain he'll turn up again quite jolly."

"If only I could think so!" she would reply sadly.

Every day she would visit the wounded men, who were lying in a temporary
hospital within the precincts of the laager, and this she never missed.
They had been wounded in her defence, she declared, and anything she
could do to brighten the weariness and pain of their enforced detention
should be done. And brighten it she did, and her daily visit was looked
forward to with such eagerness that more than one poor fellow declared
that it almost made it worth while being knocked out. But Jim Steele
growled mightily.

"To think I should be logged up here, when Peters and the rest are
looking for the captain. These infernal sawboneses are no damn good at
all. Eh, Strange?"

"No? Only to save you by a miracle from having to part with your hoof,
Jim," answered the Buluwayo surgeon tranquilly. "That no good, eh?"

For the other had been shot in the ankle, and had just escaped the
necessity of amputation by something like a miracle, as the doctor had
said.

"Well, get it all right again sharp, that's what I want," growled the
big fellow, who was terribly hipped and impatient under his enforced
rest. "Get me out of this in ten days, Strange, and I'll double your
blooming fees--Dawson's too."

"If you were to multiply them by twenty or twenty hundred, Jim, it
couldn't be done," answered the surgeon tranquilly. "Moreover, not with
my consent, nor Dawson's either,"--the latter was the Gandela
medico,--"do you put that foot to the ground under six weeks. No, it's
no use cussing, none at all. Besides, here's Miss Vidal just coming in,
and she might hear you."

There was one who was variously affected by the disappearance of
Lamont--one of whom we have lost sight of for a little, and that one was
Ancram. When he awoke from his slumber of exhaustion to find the relief
party gone, at first he had affected great concern. Why had not someone
awakened him? Of course he would have joined it. As a matter of fact,
he was overjoyed that no one had, for he had no stomach for fighting,
and had spent the last three days heartily wishing he had taken Lamont's
advic