The flicker of the dawn was growing lighter in the sky, and he could see dimly now, as in some winter day’s dark twilight, though all around him hung the leaden mist, with the wild winds driving furiously.  It was with difficulty also that he kept his feet against their force; but he was blown onward by their current, though beaten from side to side, and he still made his way forward.  He had repassed the ground already traversed by some hundred yards or more, which seemed the length of many miles in the hurricane that was driving over the earth and sky, when some outline still duskier than the dusky shadow caught his sight; it was the body of a horse, standing on guard over the fallen body of a man.

Another moment and he was beside them.

“My God!  Are you hurt?”

He could see nothing but an indistinct and shapeless mass, without form or color to mark it out from the brooding gloom and from the leaden earth.  But the voice he knew so well answered him with the old love and fealty in it; eager with fear for him.

“When did you miss me, sir?  I didn’t mean you to know; I held on as long as I could; and when I couldn’t no longer, I thought you was safe not to see I’d knocked over, so dark as it was.”

“Great Heavens!  You are hurt, then?”

“Just finished, sir.  Lord!  It don’t matter.  Only you ride on, Mr. Cecil; ride on, I say.  Don’t mind me.”

“What is it?  When were you struck?  O Heaven!  I never dreamt——­”

Cecil hung over him, striving in vain through the shadows to read the truth from the face on which he felt by instinct the seal of death was set.

“I never meant you should know, sir.  I meant just to drop behind and die on the quiet.  You see, sir, it was just this way; they hit me as we forced through them.  There’s the lance-head in my loins now.  I pressed it in hard, and kept the blood from flowing, and thought I should hold out so till the sun rose.  But I couldn’t do it so long; I got sick and faint after a while, and I knew well enough it was death.  So I dropped down while I’d sense left to check the horse and get out of saddle in silence.  I hoped you wouldn’t miss me, in the darkness and the noise the wind was making; and you didn’t hear me then, sir.  I was glad.”

His voice was checked in a quick, gasping breath; his only thought had been to lie down and die in the solitude so that his master might be saved.

A great sob shook Cecil as he heard; no false hope came to him; he felt that this man was lost to him forever, that this was the sole recompense which the cruelty of Africa would give to a fidelity passing the fidelity of woman; these throes of dissolution the only payment with which fate would ever requite a loyalty that had held no travail weary, no exile pain, and no danger worthy counting, so long as they were encountered and endured in his own service.

“Don’t take on about it, sir,” whispered Rake, striving to raise his head that he might strain his eyes better through the gloom to see his master’s face.  “It was sure to come some time; and I ain’t in no pain—­to speak of.  Do leave me, Mr. Cecil—­leave me, for God’s sake, and save yourself!”