ned one another.

"Wait," continued the officer in command. "I daresay our brother has
wounded him and will bring him back in a few minutes."

The Boers waited with their little force drawn up in line and facing the
black far-stretching veldt, every man wondering which two of their party
had been traitor and pursuer, and naturally waited in vain.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

QUERY: FREEDOM?

The dash for liberty had been well carried out, West getting his sturdy
pony into a swinging gallop before he had gone far, and keeping it up
straight away till he could hear Ingleborough's shout in close pursuit,
when he drew rein a little, till in its efforts to rejoin its companion
the second pony raced up alongside.

"Bravo, West, lad!" panted Ingleborough, in a low tone that sounded
terribly loud in their ears, which magnified everything in their
excitement. "It's a pity you are not in the regulars!"

"Why?"

"You'd soon be a general!"

"Rubbish!" said West shortly. "Don't talk or they'll be on us! Can you
hear them coming?"

"No; and I don't believe they will come! They'll leave it to me to
catch you. I say, I didn't kill you when I fired, did I?"

"No," said West, with a little laugh, "but you made me jump each time!
The sensation was rather queer."

"I took aim at an angle of forty-five degrees with the horizon or
thereabouts, to be exact," said Ingleborough pedantically; "and those
two, my first shots with a Mauser rifle, no doubt have travelled a
couple of miles at what they call a high trajectory. But what glorious
luck!"

"Yes; I never dared to hope that the plan would succeed so well."

"Talk about humbugging anyone--why, it was splendid!"

"But oughtn't we to go off at right angles now?" said West anxiously, as
he turned himself in his saddle and listened.

"Quite time enough to do that when we hear them tearing along in full
pursuit, and that will not be to-night."

"Think not?"

"I feel sure of it, lad! Of course they can't hatch it out in their
thick skulls that their two prisoners were the actors in this little
drama: they can't know till they get back that we have escaped."

"Of course not."

"And you may depend upon it that they'll stand fast for about a quarter
of an hour waiting for me to come back, either with my prisoner alive or
with his scalp--I mean his rifle, ammunition, and pony."

"And when they find that you don't come back?" said West, laughing to
himself.

"Then the