I splashed through and stumbled into one of their camp-fires.

A man questioned me, and told me that Arcoll had got his quarry.

'He's dead, they say.
They shot him out on the hills when he was making for the Limpopo.' But I knew that this was not true.

It was burned on my mind that Laputa was alive, nay, was waiting for me, and that it was God's will that we should meet in the cave.
A little later I struck the track of the Kaffirs' march.

There was a broad, trampled way through the bush, and I followed it, for it led to Dupree's Drift.