" The black brutes have fired the valley 

 to burn him out. Come on quick. We 

 must get out of this on to the slopes ! " 

 We did not know then that there were no slopes 

 only a precipitous face of rock with dense jungle 

 to the foot of it ; and after we had spent a quarter of 

 an hour in that effort, we found our way blocked 

 by the krans and a tangle of undergrowth much 

 worse than that in the middle of the terrace. The noise 

 made by the wind in the trees and our struggling 

 through the grass and bush had prevented our hearing 

 the fire at first, but now its ever growing roar drowned 

 all sounds. Ordinarily, there would have been no 

 real difficulty in avoiding a bush fire ; but, pinned in 

 between the river and the precipice and with miles of 

 dense bush behind us, it was not at all pleasant. 



Had we turned back even then and made for the 

 poort it is possible we might have travelled faster than 

 the fire, but it would have been rough work indeed ; 

 moreover, that would have been going back and we 

 did want to get the buffalo so we decided to make 

 one more try, towards the river this time. It was 

 not much of a try, however, and we had gone no 

 further than the middle of the terrace again when 

 it became alarmingly clear that this fire meant 

 business. 



The wind increased greatly, as it always does once 

 a bush fire gets a start ; the air was thick with smoke, 

 and full of flying things ; in the bush and grass about 

 us there was a constant scurrying ; the terror of 

 stampede was in the very atmosphere. A few words 



290 



