Therefore over the Berg I must be before morning, or there would be a dead man with no tales to tell.
I think that even at the start of that night's work I realized the exceeding precariousness of my chances.

Some twenty miles of bush and swamp separated me from the foot of the mountains.

After that there was the climbing of them, for at the point opposite where I now stood the Berg does not descend sharply on the plain, but is broken into foot-hills around the glens of the Klein Letaba and the Letsitela.
From the spot where these rivers emerge on the flats to the crown of the plateau is ten miles at the shortest.

I had a start of an hour or so, but before dawn I had to traverse thirty miles of unknown and difficult country.

Behind me would follow the best trackers in Africa, who knew every foot of the wilderness.