lear in its
green scintillations.

Dawn rose, chill and clear, upon the endless tossing mountain waste.
But before the night silvered into that pearly shade which should
preface the golden flush of the sunrise, our two adventurers, loaded
with all the implements of their enterprise, stood waiting on the spot
where Renshaw had left his mark on first making the discovery.

Then as the lightening earth began to unfold its mysteries, they took in
the whole situation at a glance. Standing with their backs to the
precipitous cock's-comb ridge, they looked down upon the terraced second
summit of the mountain. But between this and where they stood yawned a
crater-like rift. An ejaculation escaped Renshaw.

"By Jove! Just look. Why, the crater itself is the exact shape of an
eye!"

It was. Widening outward at the centre and terminating in an acute
angle at each extremity, it was indeed a wonderful formation. Shaped
like an eye-socket, and shut in on every side by precipitous rock walls,
the gulf looked at first sight inaccessible. It seemed about half a
mile in length, by four hundred yards at the widest point, and although
this extraordinary hollow extended nearly the whole width of the
mountain, dividing the flat table summit from the sheering ridge--yet
there was no outlet at either end. Both stood gazing in amazement upon
this marvellous freak of Nature.

"What did I tell you, old chap?" cried Sellon, triumphantly. "There's
more room on the top of this old berg than you'd think. Who'd have
thought of finding a place like that up here? I believe it's an extinct
volcano, when all's said and done."

"Likely. Now let's get to work."

They descended the steep slope to the spot whence the arrow experiment
had been made, and where Sellon had so narrowly escaped a grisly death.
It was near the widest part of the rift. As they had expected, the
cliff fell away in a sheer, unbroken wall at least two hundred feet.
Nor did the opposite sides seem to offer any greater facility.
Whichever way they looked, the rock fell sheer, or nearly so.

"We can do nothing here!" said Renshaw, surveying every point with a
fairly powerful field-glass. "There are our chalk-marks all right--
flags and all. We had better make a cast round to the right. According
to Greenway's story, the krantzes must be in a sort of terrace formation
somewhere. That will be at the point where he was dodging the Bushmen."

Skirting the edge of t