"To think I should be logged up here, when Peters and the rest are looking for the captain. These infernal sawboneses are no damn good at all. Eh, Strange?" "No? Only to save you by a miracle from having to part with your hoof, Jim," answered the Buluwayo surgeon tranquilly. "That no good, eh?" For the other had been shot in the ankle, and had just escaped the necessity of amputation by something like a miracle, as the doctor had said. "Well, get it all right again sharp, that's what I want," growled the big fellow, who was terribly hipped and impatient under his enforced rest. "Get me out of this in ten days, Strange, and I'll double your blooming fees--Dawson's too." "If you were to multiply them by twenty or twenty hundred, Jim, it couldn't be done," answered the surgeon tranquilly. "Moreover, not with my consent, nor Dawson's either,"--the latter was the Gandela medico,--"do you put that foot to the ground under six weeks. No, it's no use cussing, none at all. Besides, here's Miss Vidal just coming in, and she might hear you." There was one who was variously affected by the disappearance of Lamont--one of whom we have lost sight of for a little, and that one was Ancram. When he awoke from his slumber of exhaustion to find the relief party gone, at first he had affected great concern. Why had not someone awakened him? Of course he would have joined it. As a matter of fact, he was overjoyed that no one had, for he had no stomach for fighting, and had spent the last three days heartily wishing he had taken Lamont's advice and cleared out of the country in time. More than ever did he congratulate himself on his escape, when the experiences of the relief party became known, but it was with dismay that he learned the disappearance of its leader. For Ancram was getting desperately hard up, and would soon not know which way to turn. He was not much liked among those into whose midst he had come. Lamont might have helped him--probably would--not by reason of what he could tell--the prowess of the missing man was too much in the air for that--but for old acquaintance' sake; and now Lamont had disappeared. The days of that disappearance had just grown into weeks. News would filter through from outside--of battles fought, of rescues effected; of losses inflicted upon the savage enemy: but of the missing man, and those who sought him, came no word, and Clare Vidal, abandoning hope, could only storm high Heaven with supplication for him, whether in life or in death. CHAPTER TWENTY NINE. "WHERE HE WAS." Even with the first slip and stumble of his horse Lamont realised that his last moment had come; and, as he lay pinned there and unable to move, he restrained a natural instinct to call for assistance. His fleeing comrades could not render him such, and the attempt would result in the certain sacrifice of their own lives. His time had come.