ting the
thorn bushes at the gate of our zareba, quickly slipped out. My last
glance showed me the unconscious Summerlee, most futile of sentinels,
still nodding away like a queer mechanical toy in front of the
smouldering fire.

I had not gone a hundred yards before I deeply repented my rashness. I
may have said somewhere in this chronicle that I am too imaginative to
be a really courageous man, but that I have an overpowering fear of
seeming afraid. This was the power which now carried me onwards. I
simply could not slink back with nothing done. Even if my comrades
should not have missed me, and should never know of my weakness, there
would still remain some intolerable self-shame in my own soul. And yet
I shuddered at the position in which I found myself, and would have
given all I possessed at that moment to have been honorably free of the
whole business.

It was dreadful in the forest. The trees grew so thickly and their
foliage spread so widely that I could see nothing of the moon-light
save that here and there the high branches made a tangled filigree
against the starry sky. As the eyes became more used to the obscurity
one learned that there were different degrees of darkness among the
trees--that some were dimly visible, while between and among them there
were coal-black shadowed patches, like the mouths of caves, from which
I shrank in horror as I passed. I thought of the despairing yell of
the tortured iguanodon--that dreadful cry which had echoed through the
woods. I thought, too, of the glimpse I had in the light of Lord
John's torch of that bloated, warty, blood-slavering muzzle. Even now
I was on its hunting-ground. At any instant it might spring upon me
from the shadows--this nameless and horrible monster. I stopped, and,
picking a cartridge from my pocket, I opened the breech of my gun. As
I touched the lever my heart leaped within me. It was the shot-gun,
not the rifle, which I had taken!

Again the impulse to return swept over me. Here, surely, was a most
excellent reason for my failure--one for which no one would think the
less of me. But again the foolish pride fought against that very word.
I could not--must not--fail. After all, my rifle would probably have
been as useless as a shot-gun against such dangers as I might meet. If
I were to go back to camp to change my weapon I could hardly expect to
enter and to leave again without being seen. In that case there would
be expla