On rushed the mighty stream, roaring its swollen course down to the Zambesi, rolling with it the body of dead Ziboza, hacked and ripped, the grand frame of the athletic savage a mere chip when tossed about by the hissing waves of the turbid flood. On, too, rolled the body of his slayer, as yet uninjured and still containing life. And in the noon-tide night, darkened by the black rain-burst which beat down in torrents, and, well-nigh ceaseless, the blue lightning sheeted over the furious boil of brown water and tree trunks and driftwood: and with the awful roar above, even the baffled savages were cowed, for it seemed as though the elements themselves were wrath over the death of a mighty chief. Strange are the trifles which turn the scale of momentous happenings. Strange, too, and ironical withal, that the body of dead Ziboza should be the means of restoring to life its very nearly dead slayer. For the current, bringing the corpse of the chief against a large uprooted tree, upset the balance of this, causing it to rise half out of the water and turn right over. This in its turn impeded a quantity of driftwood, and the whole mass, coming in violent contact with the bank, threw back a great wave, the swirl of which, catching the body of the still-living man, heaved it into a lateral cleft, then poured forth again to rejoin the momentarily impeded current. A glimmer of returning consciousness moved Hilary Blachland to grasp a trailing bough which swept down into the cleft, a clearer instinct moved him to hold on to it with all his might and main. Thus he saved himself from being sucked back into the stream again. For a few minutes thus he crouched, collecting his returning faculties-- and the first thing that came home to him was that he was in one of those cavernlike inlets on the river bank similar to that in which his struggle with Ziboza had taken place. Stay! Was it the same? He had a confused recollection of being swept out into stream, but that might have been an illusion. He peered around. The place was very dark but it was not a cave. The overhanging of one side of the cleft, and the interlacing of bushes and trees above, however, rendered it very like one. But this fissure was much smaller than the one he had fallen into with the Matabele chief, nor was it anything like as deep. Had he been swept far down the river, he wondered? Then he decided such could not have been the case, or he would have been drowned or knocked to pieces among the driftwood, whereas here he was, practically unharmed, only very exhausted. A thrill of exultation ran through his dripping frame as he realised that he was uninjured. But it did not last, for--he realised something further.