e, when bang came a shower of assegais and arrows and kerries,
hurtling about the rocks like a young hailstorm. I spurred up then, you
bet; but the ground is beastly rough, as you've seen, and the enemy
could get along as fast as I could--besides, I had a brute of a
pack-horse that wouldn't lead properly. They chased me down to where we
first entered this defile, and by that time it was dark--luckily for me.
As it was, I only shook them off by sacrificing the pack-horse."

"Now, how the deuce did you manage that?"

"Why, I knew they'd reckon on me taking the shortest cut for the river.
So when I got out of the poort at the bottom of the turret-head
mountain--you remember that steep little slope where your horse turned a
somersault--I put on pace a little so as to get a start. Then I stuck a
burr under the pack-horse's tail and cast him loose. Away he went,
slanting off into the other poort, which seems to lead towards the
river, while I lay low. I could see the devils skipping down the poort
on his heels, in high old glee. In the night I moved on again, striking
due north, and after making nearly a week's cast--and nearly dying of
hunger and thirst--I fetched up at the drift we came through day before
yesterday. And, by the way, I think old Greenway was wrong in saying,
`Beware the schelm Bushmen.' Those chaps struck me as more like
Korannas. There were some quite big fellows among them."

The time and place were singularly appropriate to the narration of wild
and perilous experiences. But this latest in no wise tended to raise
the listener's spirits. Sellon was not of the stuff of which
adventurers are made. He was keen enough on this expedition and the
dazzling possibilities it held out. But he didn't want to be killed or
wounded if he could help it. No such thing as going into danger out of
pure love of excitement found a place in his philosophy. He was not
imaginative, yet the idea of being struck down by an unseen enemy, or
worse still, perhaps, dragging himself away mortally wounded to die like
an animal in a hole or cave, in the heart of this frightful desert, a
multitude of foul and loathsome beasts howling for his blood, per
adventure waiting till mortal weakness should embolden them to pounce on
him before life was extinct--these considerations struck home to him
now, and fairly made him shiver.

"By-the-by, Sellon," said the careless voice of his companion, "do you
think you'd be able to fin