At last, when we had pushed our way some distance in, we heard a wild cry from outside.  It was Doolittle’s voice.  “Quick! quick! out again!  The man will escape!  He has come back on his tracks, and rounded!”

I saw our mistake at once.  We had left our companion out there alone, rendered helpless by the care of all three horses.

Colebrook said never a word.  He was a man of action.  He turned with instinctive haste, and followed our own spoor back again with his hands and knees to the opening in the thicket by which we had first entered.

Before we could reach it, however, two shots rang out clear in the direction where we had left poor Doolittle and the horses.  Then a sharp cry broke the stillness—­the cry of a wounded man.  We redoubled our pace.  We knew we were outwitted.

When we reached the open, we saw at once by the uncertain light what had happened.  The fugitive was riding away on my own little sorrel,—­riding for dear life; not back the way we came from Salisbury, but sideways across the veldt towards Chimoio and the Portuguese seaports.  The other two horses, riderless and terrified, were scampering with loose heels over the dark plain.  Doolittle was not to be seen; he lay, a black lump, among the black bushes about him.

We looked around for him, and found him.  He was severely, I may even say dangerously, wounded.  The bullet had lodged in his right side.  We had to catch our two horses, and ride them back with our wounded man, leading the fugitive’s mare in tow, all blown and breathless.  I stuck to the fugitive’s mare; it was the one clue we had now against him.  But Sebastian, if it was Sebastian, had ridden off scot-free.  I understood his game at a glance.  He had got the better of us once more.  He would make for the coast by the nearest road, give himself out as a settler escaped from the massacre, and catch the next ship for England or the Cape, now this coup had failed him.

Doolittle had not seen the traitor’s face.  The man rose from the bush, he said, shot him, seized the pony, and rode off in a second with ruthless haste.  He was tall and thin, but erect—­that was all the wounded scout could tell us about his assailant.  And that was not enough to identify Sebastian.

All danger was over.  We rode back to Salisbury.  The first words Hilda said when she saw me were:  “Well, he has got away from you!”

“Yes; how did you know?”

“I read it in your step.  But I guessed as much before.  He is so very keen; and you started too confident.”

CHAPTER IX

THE EPISODE OF THE LADY WHO WAS VERY EXCLUSIVE