We can ride fast now that
we have got rid of the dynamite. It will be some time before they get
the news about what has happened here, for the telegraph wires are sure
to be broken and the instruments smashed. I really think that our best
way will be to ride straight down to Lorenzo Marques. When we get there
we can very well state that we had been ordered to leave Johannesburg,
and that, as the trains are so slow and so crowded with fugitives, we
had ridden down. I don't suppose that we shall attract the least notice,
for we know that a great many of those who had intended to stay have
been ordered off. That way we shall get back to Natal in a few days and
avoid all danger." The others agreed that this would be a capital plan;
and the distance by the road, which they had crossed a few miles to the
south, and which runs from Lorenzo Marques up to Ladysdorp and the
Murchison and Klein Lemba gold-fields, would not be above seventy miles.
They would wait till daybreak showed them the amount of damage that had
been done, and then start, and would be down at Lorenzo Marques in the
evening, when, even if the news of the explosion reached the town, the
Boers' suspicions that some Englishmen were in the hills, and that it
was probably their work, would not be known.
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