Ernest’s distress was so acute, that Jeremy, looking at him and seeing that all he had gone through had been too much for him, tried to soothe him, lest he should go into hysterics, by putting his arm round his waist and giving him a good hug. “Look here, old chap,” he said; “it is no use bothering one’s head about these things. We are just so many feathers blown about by the wind, and must float where the wind blows us. Sometimes it is a good wind, and sometimes a bad one; but on the whole it is bad, and we must just make the best of it, and wait till it doesn’t think it worth while to blow our particular feathers about any more, and then we shall come to the ground, and not till then. And now we have been up here for more than five minutes, and given the horses a bit of a rest. We must be pushing on if we want to get to Helpmakaar before dark, and I only hope we shall get there before the Zulus, that’s all. By Jove, here comes the storm—come on!” And Jeremy jumped off the lump of iron-ore, and began to descend the koppie. Ernest, who had been listening with his face in his hands, rose and followed him in silence. As he did so, a breath of ice-cold air from the storm-cloud, which was now right over-head, fanned his hot brow, and when he had gone a few yards he turned to meet it, and to cast one more look at the scene. It was the last earthly landscape he ever saw. For at that instant there leaped from the cloud overhead a fierce stream of jagged light, which struck the mass of iron-ore on which they had been seated, shivered and fused it, and then ran down the side of the hill to the plain. Together with the lightning there came an ear-splitting crack of thunder. Jeremy, who was now nearly at the bottom of the little hill, staggered at the shock. When he recovered, he looked up where Ernest had been standing, and could not see him. He rushed up the hill again, calling him in accents of frantic grief. There was no answer. Presently he found him lying on the ground, white and still. [Illustration: “He found him lying on the ground, white and still.”] BOOK III. CHAPTER I. THE CLIFFS OF OLD ENGLAND It was an April evening; off the south coast of England. The sun had just made up his mind to struggle out from behind a particularly black shower-cloud, and give that part of the world a look before he bade it good-night. “That is lucky,” said a little man, who was with difficulty hanging on to the bulwark netting of the H.M.S. _Conway Castle;_ “now, Mr. Jones, look if you can’t see them in the sunlight.” Mr. Jones accordingly looked through his glasses again. “Yes,” he said, “I can see them distinctly.” “See what?” asked another passenger, coming up. “The cliffs of Old England,” answered the little man, joyously. “Oh, is that all?” said the other; “curse the cliffs of Old England!” “Nice remark that for a man who is going home to be married, eh?” said the little man, turning to where his companion had stood.