The march stopped at the first outbreak of the squall.  Kettle bolted to a rock ahead of him, and squatted down in a dry lee, sucking up great draughts of the new cool air.  There are times when a drop of five degrees of temperature can bring earthly bliss of a quality almost unimaginable.  And there he stayed, philosophically waiting till the tornado should choose to blow itself out.

The wind had started with a roar and a sudden squall, reaching the full climax of its strength in a matter of thirty seconds, and then with equal hurry it ended, leaving the country it had scoured full of a fresh, cool, glistening calm.  Kettle rose to his feet, shook his clothes into shape, and gave the order to start.

The black soldiers stepped out in his wake, and for half a mile he strode at their head through the new-made mud of the path.  But then he was suddenly brought up all standing.  Word had been tediously handed down the long straggling line of men that there had been an accident in the rear; that a great tree had fallen to the blast; and finally that “dem dokitar, he lib for die.”

Swiftly Kettle turned, and worked his way back down the narrow lane of the path.  The negroes he hustled against watched him with stupid stares, but he gave them little notice.  Leaving out the facts that Clay was his only white companion and assistant, he had grown strangely to like the man, and the vague report of the accident filled him with more than dismay.

He had over a mile to go before he came upon the scene, and when he did get there he found that the first report had exaggerated.  Clay was not dead, but he lay unconscious on the ground, pinned there by a great cotton-wood which had crashed down before the fury of the wind, and which had fallen across his right leg.  To move the tree was an impossibility; but with a sailor’s resourcefulness Kettle set his men to dig beneath it, so that the imprisoned leg might be released that way; and himself gave them a lead.

Clay, fortunately for himself, remained the whole time in a state of blank unconsciousness, and at last he was released, but with his leg horribly mangled.  A hammock had meanwhile been rigged, and in this he was carried back to the village from which they had set out.  Kettle led the retreat in front of the hammock bearers.  He left his force of soldiers and carriers to follow, or straggle, or desert, as they pleased.  The occupation of ivory raiding had completely passed from his mind; he had forgotten his schemes of wholesale conversion; he had nothing but Clay’s welfare left at his heart.

He got the wounded man under cover of one of the village huts, and there, with the help of stimulants, poor Clay’s senses came back to him, He was lividly pale with pain and the shock, but he was game to the backbone, and made no especial complaint.  Indeed, he was rather disposed to treat the whole thing humorously.