intention of betraying me and returning with a few Matabele to capture
me.

For an hour or two I lay there, until presently I saw Grootboom
creeping back through the grass--alone.

Ashamed of my doubts, I therefore came out and went to our rendezvous,
and found him grinning all over with satisfaction while he was putting
on his clothes again. He said that he had found as he had expected,
an ambush laid for us. The thing that had made him suspicious was that
the fires, instead of lighting up all over the hillside at different
points about the same time, had been lighted in steady succession one
after another, evidently by one man going round. This struck him as
suspicious, and he then assumed that it was done to lead us on, if we
were anywhere around, to go and examine more closely the locality.

He had crept in towards them by a devious path, from which he was able
to perceive a whole party of the Matabele lying low in the grass by
the track which we should probably have used in getting there, and
they would have pounced upon us and captured us.

To make sure of this suspicion he crept round till near their
stronghold, and coming from there he got in among them and chatted
away with them, finding out what was their intention with regard to
ourselves, and also what were their plans for the near future. Then,
having left them, and walked boldly back towards their stronghold, he
crept away amongst some rocks and rejoined me.

His was an example of the work of a field spy which, although in a way
it may be cunning and deceitful, at the same time demands the greatest