The sun
brought me to life afterwards. Then some natives turned up, good people
in their way, although I could not understand a word they said. They
made a stretcher of boughs and carried me for some miles to their kraal
inland. It hurt awfully, for my thigh was broken, but I arrived at last.
There a Kaffir doctor set my leg in his own fashion; it has left it an
inch shorter than the other, but that's better than nothing.
"In that place I lay for two solid months, for there was no white
man within a hundred miles, and if there had been I could not have
communicated with him. Afterwards I spent another month limping up
towards Natal, until I could buy a horse. The rest is very short.
Hearing of my reported death, I came as fast as I could to your father's
farm, Rooi Krantz, where I learned from the old vrouw Sally that you had
taken to treasure-hunting, the same treasure that I told you of on the
_Zanzibar_.
"So I followed your spoor, met the servants whom you had sent back, who
told me all about you, and in due course, after many adventures, as they
say in a book, walked into the camp of our friends, the Matabele.
"They were going to kill me at once, when suddenly you appeared upon
that point of rock, glittering like--like the angel of the dawn.
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