off abruptly to the right, led the way obliquely down a steep
rocky declivity. Steeper and steeper it became, till the riders deemed
it advisable to dismount and lead. Slipping, scrambling, sliding among
the loose stones, the staunch steeds stumbled on. Even the pack-horse,
a game little Basuto pony, appointed to that office by reason of his
extra sure-footedness, was within an ace of coming to grief more than
once, while Sellon's larger steed actually did turn a complete
somersault, luckily without sustaining any injury, but causing his owner
to bless his stars he was on his own feet at the time. The second great
turret-head, foreshortened against the sky, now disappeared, shut back
from view by the steep fall of the ground.

"We have touched bottom at last," said Renshaw, as, to the unspeakable
relief of the residue of the party--equine no less than human--
comparatively level ground was reached. But the place they were now in
looked like nothing so much as a dry stony river-bed. Barely a hundred
yards in width, it was shut in on either side by gloomy krantzes,
sheering up almost from the level itself.

"What a ghastly hole!" said Maurice, whom the dismal aspect of the gorge
depressed. "How much further are these tunnel-like infernos going to
last, Fanning? I swear it felt like a glimpse of daylight again, when
we were riding up there past the two canister-headed gentry just now."

"I shouldn't have thought you were such an imaginative chap, Sellon."

"Well, you see, this everlasting feeling of being shut in is dismal
work. Beastly depressing, don't you know."

"You must make up your mind to it a little longer. There's a water-hole
about an hour from here, and there we'll off-saddle and lie by for a
snooze. By the way, it's dry here, isn't it?"

"Ghastly! It looks like a place where a stream should be running, too."

"Well, I've seen such a roaring, racing, mountainous torrent galloping
down here, that there wasn't foothold for man or beast anywhere between
these krantzes. By-the-by, you may devoutly pray that there's no rain
during the next few days. A thunder-storm in the mountains higher up
would set the whole of this place humming with water."

The sun had left them, and the grey dead silence of the savage defile
seemed to echo back the tones of their voices and the clink of the
horses' hoofs, with abnormal clearness. Sellon eyed the grim rock walls
towering over their heads, and growled.