y are apt to
find themselves puzzled in a forest. The best men among the trackers
were some renegades of 'Mpefu, who sent back word by a device known
only to Arcoll that five Kaffirs were in the woods a mile north of Main
Drift. By this time it was after ten o'clock, and the moon was rising.
The five men separated soon after, and the reports became confused.
Then Laputa, as the biggest of the five, was located on the banks of
the Great Letaba about two miles below Main Drift.

The question was as to his crossing. Arcoll had assumed that he would
swim the river and try to get over the road between Main Drift and
Wesselsburg. But in this assumption he underrated the shrewdness of
his opponent. Laputa knew perfectly well that we had not enough men to
patrol the whole countryside, but that the river enabled us to divide
the land into two sections and concentrate strongly on one or the
other. Accordingly he left the Great Letaba unforded and resolved to
make a long circuit back to the Berg. One of his Kaffirs swam the
river, and when word of this was brought Arcoll began to withdraw his
posts farther down the road. But as the men were changing 'Mpefu's
fellows got wind of Laputa's turn to the left, and in great haste
Arcoll countermanded the move and waited in deep perplexity at Main
Drift.

The salvation of his scheme was the farmers on the scarp of the Berg.
They lit fires and gave Laputa the notion of a great army. Instead of
going up the glen of Machudi or the Letsitela he bore away to the north
for the valley of the Klein Letaba. The pace at which he moved must
have been amazing. He had a great physique, hard as nails from long
travelling, and in his own eyes he had an empire at stake. When I look
at the map and see the journey which with vast fatigue I completed from
Dupree's Drift to Machudi's, and then look at the huge spaces of
country over which Laputa's legs took him on that night, I am lost in
admiration of the man.

About midnight he must have crossed the Letsitela. Here he made a
grave blunder. If he had tried the Berg by one of the faces he might
have got on to the plateau and been at Inanda's Kraal by the dawning.
But he over-estimated the size of the commandoes, and held on to the
north, where he thought there would be no defence. About one o'clock
Arcoll, tired of inaction and conscious that he had misread Laputa's
tactics, resolved on a bold stroke. He sent half his police to the
Berg to