In short, he had tumbled into a species of nullah or hollow, completely fringed round with enormous boughs and luxuriant greenery, where he lay hidden and undiscovered by the riflemen whom his pistol-shots summoned, and who searched the whole vicinity in vain, till they could delay no longer, as the waters were rising fast. They carried off with them Dalton, who was severely wounded by dagger-blades, and whose haversack had been cut away, and taken, and with it, of course, the unlucky _scarabœus_. And so, while poor Jerry lay where we have described, the army pushed on its homeward way, and ere long found the obstructions increase as the night advanced. Where there had been a small stream at one place the water was three hundred yards wide and five feet deep. With great toil the Engineers bridged this by felling a huge tree, over which the white troops defiled slowly, while the carriers and others had to splash their way through as best they could, and many of the shorter men disappeared under the surface more than once. A worse obstruction still was encountered at Ordah, where the water had risen two feet above the bridge built by the Engineers, and was more than five feet deep in the mid-channel, and there the shorter men had all to be assisted by their comrades who could swim. Another day crept on, and by five o'clock in the afternoon the whole of the white troops had succeeded in crossing the half-hidden bridge; but darkness was coming on, the river was rising fast, and for all they knew the Ashantees, infuriated by the destruction of Coomassie, might be pouring in wild hordes upon their rear! Dalton's wounds had been dressed, but ere that was done he had lost so much blood that his chances of recovery seemed very precarious; and meanwhile how fared Jerry Wilmot? When he struggled back to consciousness, and half raised himself out of the place in which he lay by grasping the branch of a bush, he found himself alone, and surrounded by dead silence. Not a sound fell on his ear, and at a little distance he could see the red smouldering flames of Coomassie. But where were the troops? 'Oh, God, help me!' he wailed out. 'Gone--gone, and I am left alone and helpless behind them!' There was a gleam of moonlight now, and after several futile efforts, for his senses reeled like those of one intoxicated, he made out the hour on his watch. 'Midnight--and they have been six hours on the march!' He had been in a state of semi-unconsciousness for some two hours. The sense--the conviction that he must instantly do something--attempt to overtake them, made him struggle up desperately, feebly, and half blinded in his own blood. 'Oh, Lord,' thought Jerry, 'I shall lose the little reason I have left! Why did Dalton covet that infernal beetle!'