He realised that he was weaponless. His rifle had been shot from his hand. He had lost his revolver in his fall, and even the sheath knife, wherewith he had slain Ziboza, he had relaxed his grasp of at the moment of being swept away. He was that most helpless animal of all--an unarmed man. He realised further that he was in the remotest and most unknown part of little known Matabeleland, that he had formed one of a _retreating_ column, which was fighting its own way out, and which would have given him up as dead long ago: that no further advance was likely to be made in this direction for some time to come, and that meanwhile every human being in the country was simply a ruthless and uncompromising foe. He realised, too, that save for a few scraps of grimy biscuit, now soaked to pulp in his jacket pocket, and plentifully spiced with tobacco dust, he was without food--and entirely without means of procuring any--and that he dared not leave his present shelter until nightfall, if then. In sum he realised that at last, even he, Hilary Blachland, was in very hard and desperate case indeed. Were his enemies still searching for him, he wondered, or had they concluded he had met his death in the raging waters of the flooded river, as indeed it seemed to him little short of a miracle that he had not? The rain was still pouring down, and the lightning flashes lit up the slippery sides of his hiding-place with a steely glare: however, the fury of the storm seemed to have spent itself, or passed over, but the bellowing, vomiting voice of the flood as it surged past the retreat, was sufficient to drown all other sounds. Then it occurred to him that he could be seen from above by any one peering over. He must get further in. He was more than knee deep in water. Towards its head, however, the cleft was dry. It terminated in a cavity just large enough for him to crouch within--overhung too, with thorn bush from above. An ideal hiding-place. The situation reminded him of something. Once he had shot a guinea-fowl on a river bank, and the bird had dropped into just such a cleft as this. After a long and careful search, he had discovered it, crouching, just as he was now crouching. It was only winged, however, and fled further into the cleft. He remembered the fierce eagerness with which he had pursued the wounded bird, fearing to lose it, how he had pounced upon and seized it when it came to the end of the cleft and could get no further. Well, events had a knack of repeating themselves. He was the hunted one now.