THE COLLAR OF PRESTER JOHN

I ran till my breath grew short, for some kind of swift motion I had to
have or choke. The events of the last few minutes had inflamed my
brain. For the first time in my life I had seen men die by
violence--nay, by brutal murder. I had put my soul into the blow which
laid out Henriques, and I was still hot with the pride of it. Also I
had in my pocket the fetich of the whole black world; I had taken their
Ark of the Covenant, and soon Laputa would be on my trail. Fear,
pride, and a blind exultation all throbbed in my veins. I must have
run three miles before I came to my sober senses.

I put my ear to the ground, but heard no sound of pursuit. Laputa, I
argued, would have enough to do for a little, shepherding his flock
over the water. He might surround and capture the patrol, or he might
evade it; the vow prevented him from fighting it. On the whole I was
clear that he would ignore it and push on for the rendezvous. All this
would take time, and the business of the priest would have to wait.
When Henriques came to he would no doubt have a story to tell, and the
scouts would be on my trail. I wished I had shot the Portugoose while
I was at the business. It would have been no murder, but a righteous
execution.

Meanwhile I must get off the road. The sand had been disturbed by an
army, so there was little fear of my steps being traced. Still it was
only wise to leave the track which I would be assumed to have taken,
for Laputa would guess I had fled back the way to
Blaauwildebeestefontein. I turned into the bush, which here was thin
and sparse like whins on a common.

The Berg must be my goal. Once on the plateau I would be inside the
white man's lines. Down here in the plains I was in the country of my
enemies. Arcoll meant to fight on the uplands when it came to
fighting. The black man might rage as he pleased in his own flats, but
we stood to defend the gates of the hills. Therefore over the Berg I
must be before morning, or there would be a dead man with no tales to
tell.

I think that even at the start of that night's work I realized the
exceeding precariousness of my chances. Some twenty miles of bush and
swamp separated me from the foot of the mountains. After that there
was the climbing of them, for at the point opposite where I now stood
the Berg does not descend sharply on the plain, but is broken into
foot-hills around the glens of the Klein Letaba and the