Sitting with his legs over John's shoulders, the stranger soon cut a notch with his knife; and in a few minutes he was hauled to the surface.
"I'm much obliged to you. I might have stayed there till I starved for all my men would have troubled."
"How did you manage to fall in?" asked Mr. Halliday.
"A rhinoceros charged us as we were crossing the foot of the kopje yonder. He sprang out from behind a small mountain of an ant-hill. My men instantly flung down their loads and bolted--idiots! and as we're rather short of meat I thought I'd try to get within shot of the beast. I was following him up when the earth gave way under me, and I found myself in this old game-pit, and don't know how I managed to escape the skewer sticking up at the bottom, as long as my arm. I say, you haven't happened to see anything of my brother, I suppose?"
"We met nobody but your men," said Mr. Halliday. "Has your brother lost himself?"
"Old Joe lost! Not a bit of it," cried the young man. "He'll turn up all right. He left me a couple of hours ago to shoot something for to-night's pot, and I thought you might have come across him. I'm rather a nuisance, I'm afraid; I can't put my left foot to the ground, and our last donkey died four days ago, so that I can't ride. We've had uncommon bad luck with our donkeys. As a rule they're hardy in this climate, we were told; but every one of the six we started with has died. Really, I am a nuisance, keeping you here."
"Nonsense," said Mr. Halliday. "Coja, shout for some of our men."
"No come, master," said Coja. "Berry much 'fraid."
"If he goes and calls our headman a coward I think it will answer," said the stranger. "Headmen are very jealous of each other."
Coja entered into the spirit of the suggestion, and ran back over the tracks. In a few minutes the sounds of angry altercation came through the bush, and Coja reappeared, in company with a white-clad Somali, each man abusing the other at the top of his voice. Mr. Halliday silenced them sternly, and ordered them to construct a litter, promising a few cents to the man who did the larger share of the work. They set to work at once, weaving strands of creeping plants and stalks of grass with amazing rapidity. In less than twenty minutes a sheet of matting was finished and firmly bound to two rifles, and on this extemporized litter the stranger was carried between the headmen back to the open ground.