CHAPTER FOUR.
WAITING FOR MY CHANCE.
I rode on painfully as regarded my wrists; for above them my arms throbbed and burned as if the veins were distended almost to bursting-point, while my hands grew gradually cold and numb, and then became insensible as so much lead.

The physical pain, however, was nothing to what I felt mentally.

Only an hour or two before I was leading that calm, happy home-life, without a trouble beyond some petty disappointment in the garden or farm or during one of the hunting or shooting expeditions with Joeboy to carry my game; and now a lightning-like stroke seemed to have descended to end my idyllic boy-life and make me a man full of suffering, and with a future which I abhorred.
"No," I argued, "I must escape, even if they do send a shower of bullets to bring me down." I did not believe much in the vaunted powers of the Boers with the rifle.

I knew that they could shoot well, but no better than my father and his two pupils, meaning Bob and myself; and I felt that we should have been very doubtful about bringing down a man going at full gallop, even in the brightest daylight; and I meant to make my venture in the dusk of the evening or after dark if only my captors would continue their journey then.

Once well started, and my rein free of the man who held it buckled to his saddle-bow, I had no fear at all, for I was sure that in a straight race there was not a Boer amongst them who could overtake me, they being heavy, middle-aged men, while I was young and light, quite at home in the saddle, and Sandho as much at home with me, upon his back.