might even yet be fulfilled.

"Things looked plainer now. One unexpected meal had come down to these
wizards through the pit into which we had both fallen. On hearing the
noise of my descent, in their eagerness for that which should yield
another, they must have climbed up to drag me down. _Au_! it was
fearful, the thought of such a fate; and, lest fear should again
overpower me, I resolved to act. So with a shout I leaped across the
floor of the pit. It crackled with bones.

"Those _abatagati_ did not rise; they sat there and screamed. _Au_!
that was a scream--one to come back to a man in his sleep, and cause him
to start up trembling! It rang through that frightful den as though to
pierce the very rocks. Something was hurled at me, but I stepped aside,
and it shivered against the rock behind. It was the skull of a man.
Another flung a weighty object which struck me full in the chest, nearly
overturning me. _Whau, Nkose_! Then was horror indeed! That which had
so nearly overthrown me was a human leg freshly torn off, and was that
of Gungana himself. What an omen, that the man whom I had killed should
even in death continue to fight against me!

"Then in my fury I sprang at them, crashing their brains out with my
heavy knobstick till I had killed several. The others threw themselves
on the ground and screamed dismally. No attempt at resistance made
they; indeed, it seemed as though they were hardly able to rise. And
then through my rage it flashed upon me that, were I to slay them all,
there would be none to reveal the way out; for a way out there must be,
and that a secret one; for, save the hole by which I had fallen down, no
passage of any kind was there to be seen. So, standing over the three
that yet remained alive, I held aloft my great knobstick, all dripping
with blood, and bade them show me the way forth.

"They screeched and chattered, not understanding a word I said. So I
made signs by pointing to the hole I had dropped down by, and then
making as though I would walk through the rock. This they understood,
and with much head-shaking and gesture pointed high above their heads.
But all I could see there was solid rock.

"Yet--there was a crack; then two or three, letting in the light. It
seemed to me, on looking long at this, that a flat, irregular hole was
there stopped up by a slab of rock, and it was from the ground about
twice the height of a tall man. Still, what could it mean? H