Here, help me to get down." I was obliged to ask for help, for the cold and damp air had made my injured limbs so stiff and painful that I could hardly move them, and it required a good strong effort to keep down a groan when I lowered myself on to my feet, and then gladly sat down upon the damp rock.
I had no fear about Sandho, whose rein had been passed over his head and allowed to hang down, for he had been trained to stand, and having grazed for many hours, had no temptation to stir.
Joeboy soon settled himself close to my feet, and then began our long and painful watching, hour after hour, through a night which seemed as if it would never end.

I had no desire to question the black, for his action fully proved to me that our position must be perilous unless we left the horse to shift for himself, and all this was sufficient to keep off any desire for sleep; while a whisper from time to time was sufficient to satisfy myself that my companion was as wakeful as I.

As the time passed on the mist seemed to thicken around us, with this peculiarity striking me: it seemed to shut us completely in, so that not a sound reached our ears, the silence being to me perfectly awful.
At last the morning was heralded by a faint puff or two of chilly air which came and went again, till at last it settled into a soft breeze, whose effects were soon apparent.

All at once, as I looked up, a cloud of mist became visible, then floated away; and as if by magic the sky, of a soft dark grey, dotted with a faint star or two, came into sight.
Then day began to advance with rapid strides, and I found my notion of our being upon a bracket of rock was not too far-fetched, for we were upon a jutting-out promontory of some fifty feet across, from whose edges the rock went down in places perpendicularly, in others with a tremendously steep slope, while the way by which we came on was not above half-a-dozen yards wide.
"You were very wise, Joeboy," I said as I rose to look round.

"It would have been madness to try leading Sandho off there in the fog." "Um!" said Joe quietly; and then: "Look!" He pointed away to our right, and, following his direction, I could here and there make out the missing path down the pass, winding along in rough zigzags till lost in the distance.
I was soon in my saddle again, and Joeboy led the horse off the perilous place where we had passed the night, and then up the pass again for a couple of hundred yards to where the track had borne off a little to the right, but where we had kept on through the mist perfectly straight, with nearly fatal results.
We looked anxiously up now as we turned off into the proper track, fully expecting to see outposts of the Boers who had fired as we crossed the head; but none were visible.