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What happened to him during his hurried flight from the rondavel Matheson never knew. He was conscious only of walking, walking heavily and unseeingly, forward into the dusk, when night abruptly overtook him and wrapped him in a darkness more complete than anything he had ever imagined. When again it was light he woke, with an unrefreshed feeling and a sense of having been victimised by an ugly dream of extraordinary vividness, to find himself lying comfortably in Herman Nel's bed in the rondavel, with an utter absence of any knowledge of how he came there. He could not recollect going to bed overnight.
Resting quietly on the pillow in semi-wakefulness, his drowsy thoughts occupied themselves with speculating on what had happened. Little by little the events of the previous evening recurred to him, but always with that dreamlike sense of unreality that left him unable to determine what was actual and what only imaginary. The sudden sharp pain of his wound which, when he moved abruptly, he felt for the first time since waking, brought bade clearly to his memory the scene of the struggle with Holman and Honor's intervention, assuring him that this was no dream but ugly reality.