noon
She sprang up and threw it wide , leaped out upon the stoep , and from thence to the ground , and fled blindly , breathlessly over the veld into the night . Bough , as soon as it was dawn , sent three of the Kaffirs from the kraals , in different directions , to search for her , and , mounted on a fresh pony , took the fourth line of search himself . He had chosen the right direction for riding down the quarry . At broad high noon he came upon her , in a bare , stony place tufted with milk-bush . She was crouching under a prickly-pear shrub , that threw a distorted blue shadow on the sun-baked , sun-bleached ground , trying to eat the fruit in the native way with two sticks . But she had no knife , and her mouth was bleeding . Bough gave the tired pony both spurs when the prey he hunted came in sight .