growth seemed to be
abundant, his father's order about going as the crow flies being ample
warrant for this.

For the matter of that, the faint track of wheel and hoof-mark went
pretty straight, only curving now and then to avoid some eminence or
rugged patch of forest, which he watched with keen eyes for enemies,
though, after what he had seen that morning in the grey dawn of the
blacks' power of concealment, he felt doubtful about seeing them if they
were in hiding to form an ambuscade.

"I wonder whether they could hit me with their spears if I was going at
this rate," he said to himself, as he bore off from one dense patch
which might easily have hidden a whole tribe. Then, in a state of
intense excitement, he cocked his gun, trembling the while, for that
there was danger at hand he felt sure, from the alarm of his horse,
which suddenly cocked its ears, while the dogs lowered their heads and
dashed together into the thicket.

"They'll give me warning," cried Nic aloud, as he bore off more to the
right so as to skirt the little wood some fifty yards away; when out
from the other side dashed half a dozen large animals, some of a ruddy
hue, others of a bluish-brown colour, bounding over the ground like
gigantic hares more than anything else, while the dogs gave tongue
loudly and tried to head them off.

But at the end of four or five hundred yards, distanced beyond all
possibility of overtaking their quarry, the collies stopped short to
stand barking, and then trotted back to join the horse coming up,
barking angrily, whining, and evidently thoroughly puzzled, as they
looked up at Nic.

"Can't you make them out?" he cried; and the dogs barked and whined
again. "Take them for sheep?" cried Nic; and in their way the dogs
answered, and kept on running up the hillocks to bark at the little
flock of strange beasts, that were growing smaller and smaller in the
distance.

Onward again in a bee line, and an hour passed, with the notch in the
mountains apparently at exactly the same distance as it was when they
started on their journey.

Then came another little scene. On Nic's right the meandering line of
bush and tree suggested where there was the course of a river, and the
dogs suddenly, from where they were some distance ahead, scented out an
occupier in a clump of rough growth low down in a swampy patch of thick
grass.

Nic swung round his gun once more; but this time the dogs did not drive
out a herd of ka