his allusion, went unnoticed. Pemberton continued, albeit
rather thickly:

"Didn't I say he'd never get there? Didn't I? Well, I say the same
now. You'll never get there. You'll never nobble Lo Ben. See if I
ain't right."

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE RETREAT OF THE PATROL.

The patrol held on its retreat.

Wearily on, from day to day, nearly a hundred and a half of hungry,
ragged, footsore men--their clothing well-nigh in tatters, their feet
bursting out of their boots, in several instances strips of clothing
wound round their feet, as a sort of tinkered substitute for what had
once been boots, as sole protection against thorns and stony ground, and
the blades of the long tambuti grass, which cut like knives--depression
at their hearts because of the score and a half of brave staunch
comrades whom they had but the faintest hope of ever beholding again--
depression too, in their faces, gaunt, haggard and unkempt, yet with it
a set fierce look of determination, a dogged, never-say-die expression,
still they held on. And ever upon their flanks hovered the savage
enemy, wiser now in his generation, wasting his strength no more in
fierce rushes, to be mown helplessly down with superior weapons. Under
cover of his native bush he could harry the retreating whites from day
to day. And he did.

Very different the appearance of this group of weary, half-starved men,
fighting its way with indomitable courage and resource, through the
thick bush and over donga-seamed ground, and among rough granite
hillocks, to that of the smart, light-hearted fellows, repelling each
fierce rush of the Matabele impis, in the skilfully constructed waggon
laagers. Every rise surmounted revealed but the same heart-breaking
stretch of bush and rocks, and dongas through which the precious Maxims
had to be hauled at any expenditure of labour and time--to be borne
rather, for the carriages of the said guns had been abandoned as
superfluous lumber--and all through the steamy heat of the day the roar
of the swollen river on the one hand never far from their ears--and,
overhead, that of the thunder-burst, which should condemn them to pass a
drenched and shivering night. For this expedition, with the great
over-weening British self-confidence which has set this restless little
island in the forefront of the nations--has started to effect with so
many--or rather so few--men, what might or might not have been effected
with just four times the numb