The slave put down his hand, and setting her foot in it, the little
woman sprang on to the back of the great stallion, which knew and loved
her as a dog might do, for she had tended it day and night when it was
ill from the sickness we call "thick head," and without doubt had saved
its life by her skill. Then, gripping its shoulders with her knees,
Sihamba shook the reins and called aloud to the _schimmel_, waving
the black rod she always carried in her hand, so that the fiery beast,
having plunged once, leapt away like an antelope, and in another minute
was nothing but a speck racing towards the mountains.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SCHIMMEL'S FIRST RACE

So hard did Sihamba ride, and so swift and untiring proved the horse,
to whose strength her light weight was as nothing, that, the veldt
over which they travelled being flat and free from stones or holes, she
reached the mouth of Tiger's Nek, twenty miles away, in very few minutes
over the hour of time. But the Nek itself was a mile or more in length,
and for aught she knew we might already be taken in Black Piet's trap,
and she but riding to share our fate. Still she did not stay, but
though it panted like a blacksmith's bellows, and its feet stumbled with
weariness among the stones of the Nek, she urged on the _schimmel_ at a
gallop. Now she turned the corner, and the off-saddling place was before
her. Swiftly and fearfully Sihamba glanced around, but seeing no signs
of us, she uttered a cry of joy and shook the reins, for she knew that
she had not ridden in vain. Then a voice from the rocks called out:

"It is the witch-doctoress, Sihamba, who rides to warn them. Kill her
swiftly." With the voice came a sound of guns and of bullets screaming
past her, one of which shattered the wand she carried in her hand,
numbing her arm. Nor was that all, for men sprang up across the further
end of the off-saddling place, where the path was narrow, to bar her
way, and they held spears in their hands. But Sihamba never heeded the
men or the spears, for she rode straight at them and through them, and
so soon was she gone that, although six or seven assegais were hurled
at her, only one of them struck the horse, wounding it slightly in the
shoulder.

A few minutes later, three perhaps, or five, just as the four of us with
our Kaffir servants were riding quietly up to the mouth of the Nek, we
saw a great horse thundering towards us, black with sweat and flecked
with foam, its s