Crawling past the native huts with very cautious steps, they made for the open, and emerged from the village on to the heights that bounded the valley of the Lugura. They had proceeded in this direction for more than an hour, walking as hard as their legs would carry them, when the sound of a man running fast, but barefoot, fell on their ears from behind in a regular pit-a-pat. Guy looked back in dismay, and saw a naked Barolong just silhouetted against the pale sky on the top of a long low ridge they had lately crossed over. At the very same instant Granville raised his revolver and pointed it at the man, who evidently had not yet perceived them. With a sudden gesture of horror, Guy knocked down his hand and prevented his taking aim. "Don't shoot," he cried, in a voice of surprised dismay and disapproval. "We mustn't take his life. How do we know he's an enemy at all? He mayn't be pursuing us." "Best shoot on spec, anyway," Granville answered, somewhat discomposed. "All's fair in war. The fellow's after us no doubt. And, at any rate, if he sees us he may go and report our whereabouts to the village." "What? shoot an unarmed man who shows no signs of hostility! Why, it would be sheer murder," Guy cried, with some horror. "We mustn't make our retreat on THOSE principles, Kelmscott; it'd be quite indefensible. I decline to fire except when we're attacked. I won't be any party, myself, to needless bloodshed." Granville Kelmscott gazed at him, there in the grey dawn, in unspeakable surprise. Not shoot at a negro! In such straits, too, as theirs! And this rebuke had come to him--from the mouth of the murderer! Turn it over as he might, Granville couldn't understand it. The Barolong ran along on the crest of the ridge, still at the top of his speed, without seeming to notice them in the gloom of the valley. Presently, he disappeared over the edge to southward. Guy was right, after all. He wasn't in pursuit of them. More likely he was only a runaway slave, taking advantage, like themselves, of King Khatsua's absence. CHAPTER XXXV. PERILS BY THE WAY. Three weeks later, two torn and tattered, half-starved Europeans sat under a burning South African sun by the dry bed of a shrunken summer torrent. It was in the depths of Namaqua land, among the stony Karoo; and the fugitives were straggling, helplessly and hopelessly, seaward, thirsty and weary, through a half-hostile country, making their marches as best they could at dead of night and resting by day where the natives would permit them.