A RIDE FOR DEAR LIFE. 9 



suddenly awakened. Besides this, one occasionally gets 

 a reminder by a thorny branch brushing across one's 

 face, or by the horse unwarily putting his foot into an 



ant-bear hole. However, as G had taken upon 



himself to do the piloting, I gathered as many winks of 

 sleep as was possible under the circumstances. 



Eels are said to get accustomed to skinning, and men 

 certainly get inured to exposure and discomfort. Since 

 those days I have often, when travelling at night, com- 

 fortably seated in a first-class carriage of an express 

 train, obtained a feeling of satisfaction by recalling to 

 memory the discomforts incurred on a night patrol, 

 and I am by no means sure that the immunity from dis- 

 comforts which accompanies a high state of civilisation 

 may not in the long run sap the courage and energy of 

 European nations. My dozing was at last interrupted 

 by G 's voice : 



" Here we are ; there is the valley to our right ; we 

 have been going for two hours ; that accords with in- 

 structions, doesn't it? It should bear southward of us 

 now ; take a look at the pocket-compass." 



Jumping off my horse, I covered the compass with 

 my hat, while G struck a match under the hat. 



" Yes, that's all right ; let us aim our course between 

 those two shoulders which descend from the hills on 

 either side. I think we had better skirt to the right as 

 much as possible, for the commandant said there was a 

 Basuto town on the slope of the range to the left hand." 



In another half-hour we saw that the two ranges were 

 getting nearer to us, and that we were approaching the 

 neck of the valley. It was, however, difficult to exactly 

 estimate the true size and distance of natural features by 

 the light of the moon. 



