anny bush and on the homely streets of
Kirkcaple.

The silence did not last long. First came the howl of a wolf, to be
answered by others from every quarter of the compass. This serenade
went on for a bit, till the jackals chimed in with their harsh bark. I
had been caught by darkness before this when hunting on the Berg, but I
was not afraid of wild beasts. That is one terror of the bush which
travellers' tales have put too high. It was true that I might meet a
hungry lion, but the chance was remote, and I had my pistol. Once
indeed a huge animal bounded across the road a little in front of me.
For a moment I took him for a lion, but on reflection I was inclined to
think him a very large bush-pig.

By this time I was out of the thickest bush and into a piece of
parkland with long, waving tambuki grass, which the Kaffirs would burn
later. The moon was coming up, and her faint rays silvered the flat
tops of the mimosa trees. I could hear and feel around me the rustling
of animals. Once or twice a big buck--an eland or a koodoo--broke
cover, and at the sight of me went off snorting down the slope. Also
there were droves of smaller game--rhebok and springbok and
duikers--which brushed past at full gallop without even noticing me.

The sight was so novel that it set me thinking. That shy wild things
should stampede like this could only mean that they had been thoroughly
scared. Now obviously the thing that scared them must be on this side
of the Letaba. This must mean that Laputa's army, or a large part of
it, had not crossed at Dupree's Drift, but had gone up the stream to
some higher ford. If that was so, I must alter my course; so I bore
away to the right for a mile or two, making a line due north-west.

In about an hour's time the ground descended steeply, and I saw before
me the shining reaches of a river. I had the chief features of the
countryside clear in my mind, both from old porings over maps, and from
Arcoll's instructions. This stream must be the Little Letaba, and I
must cross it if I would get to the mountains. I remembered that
Majinje's kraal stood on its left bank, and higher up in its valley in
the Berg 'Mpefu lived. At all costs the kraals must be avoided. Once
across it I must make for the Letsitela, another tributary of the Great
Letaba, and by keeping the far bank of that stream I should cross the
mountains to the place on the plateau of the Wood Bush which Arcoll had
told me would