hese they promptly annexed, and the party
again hurried on, the air momentarily growing fresher and keener.

Truly this cavernous road was a strange and awesome affair; the roof
here and there vanished from human ken in utter and indescribable
blackness, but uniformly it hung some fifteen to twenty feet above their
heads, and had been worn quite smooth by the rapid action of water, but
was quickly becoming a vast bed of growing stalactites, which flashed
back the rays of the torch like a sparkling sea of vivid radiance set
with many-hued and lovely diadems.

After the party had accomplished quite five miles, Grenville suddenly
called a halt, whilst all listened intently for a moment, and then,
having first examined his matches, he extinguished the torch, and,
holding one another's hands, the trio crept cautiously forward. Despite
all their care, however, in turning a corner some hundred yards further
they fairly walked into another sentinel, who promptly flew at their
throats, and for a full minute Pandemonium seemed let loose in the
bowels of the mountain. Grenville, with his customary coolness, quickly
extricated himself from the scrimmage and struck a light, only to find
Leigh and an awkward-looking customer locked in a deadly grip. The
draught here proved strong, and the match was blown out as soon as
lighted; but its flash showed the Zulu all he needed to know--enemy from
friend--and in another instant the sentinel lay a corpse, and Myzukulwa
was eulogising his war-club. Quickly the party passed on, and in
another minute found themselves at the top of a massive stone stairway,
and again under the lovely canopy of heaven, with the welcome moon
shimmering down upon them in all the weird, glittering glory of an
Equatorial African midnight.

The scene revealed to them by the moonlight was inexpressibly beautiful
and magnificent; below them some hundred feet only the rolling veldt in
all its mysterious silence swept sheer away as far as the eye could
reach, whilst to the right and left towered the majestic spurs of the
mountain-range, their snowcapped crests gleaming white under the
brilliant moon, and rendered even more vivid by contrast with the awful
chasms which here and there rent the precipitous rocks with unfathomed
depths of yawning blackness.

No sign of any living creature could they see; yet each knew that it
would be sheer madness to strike out into the unknown veldt, without
water, almost without fo