, and that is all about it."

"You must go, Captain Niel. You cannot stop here, and if you can we will
not. Look there, man!" and he pointed to the east, which now presented a
truly awful and magnificent sight.

Down, right on to them, its centre bowed out like the belly of a sail by
the weight of the wind behind, swept the great storm-cloud, while
over all its surface the lightning played unceasingly, appearing and
disappearing in needles of fire, and twisting and writhing serpentwise
round and about its outer edges. So brilliant was the intermittent light
that it appeared to fire the revolving pillars of mud-coloured cloud
beneath, and gave ghastly peeps of river and bank and plain, miles
upon miles away. But perhaps its most awful circumstance was the
preternatural silence. The distant boom and muttering of thunder had
died away, and now the great storm swept on in voiceless majesty, like
the passage of a ghostly host, from which there arose no sound of feet
or of rolling wheels. Only before it sped the swift angels of the wind,
and behind it swung the curtain of the rain.

Even as Muller spoke a gust of icy air caught the cart and tilted it,
and the lightning needles began to ply more dreadfully than ever. The
tempest was breaking upon them.

"Come, drive on, drive on!" he shouted, "you will be killed here; the
lightning always strikes along the water;" and as he said it he struck
one of the wheelers sharply with his whip.

"Climb over the back of the seat, Mouti, and stand by to help me with
the reins!" called out John to the Zulu, who obeyed, scrambling between
him and Jess.

"Now, Jess, hold on and say your prayers, for it strikes me that we
shall have need of them. So, horses, so!"

The horses backed and plunged, but Muller on the one side and the
smooth-faced Boer on the other lashed them without mercy, and at last
they went into the river with a rush. The gust had passed now, and for
a few moments the heavy quiet was renewed, except for the whirl of the
water and the snake-like hiss of the coming rain.

For some yards, ten or fifteen perhaps, all went well, and then John
discovered suddenly that they were driving into deep water; the two
leaders were evidently almost off their legs, and could scarcely stand
against the current of the flooded river.

"Damn you!" he shouted back, "there is no drift here."

"Go on, go on, it is quite safe!" came Muller's voice in answer.

John said no more, but, putt