"
"What? shoot an unarmed man who shows no signs of hostility! Why,
it would be sheer murder," Guy cried, with some horror. "We mustn't
make our retreat on THOSE principles, Kelmscott; it'd be quite
indefensible. I decline to fire except when we're attacked. I
won't be any party, myself, to needless bloodshed."
Granville Kclmscott gazed at him, there in the grey dawn, in
unspeakable surprise. Not shoot at a negro! In such straits, too,
as theirs! And this rebuke had come to him--from the mouth of the
murderer!
Turn it over as he might, Granville couldn't understand it.
The Barolong ran along on the crest of the ridge, still at the top
of his speed, without seeming to notice them in the gloom of the
valley. Presently, he disappeared over the edge to southward. Guy
was right, after all. He wasn't in pursuit of them. More likely
he was only a runaway slave, taking advantage, like themselves, of
King Khatsua's absence.
CHAPTER XXXV.
PERILS BY THE WAY.
Three weeks later, two torn and tattered, half-starved Europeans
sat under a burning South African sun by the dry bed of a shrunken
summer torrent. It was in the depths of Namaqua land, among the
stony Karoo; and the fugitives were straggling, helplessly and
hopelessly, seaward, thirsty and weary, through a half-hostile
country, making their marches as best they could at dead of night
and resting by day where the natives would permit them.
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