stume, which caused the cousins to
remark that he looked like many a man they had seen when shooting
buffalo on the prairies of the Wild West. His gun proved to be a long
flint-lock rifle of an obsolete type, but extremely well finished, and
it was the flash of the powder in the pan which had enabled Grenville to
anticipate the leaden messenger from this weapon.

Leigh, who was disposed to scoff at their present undertaking, which he
called "a wild-goose chase," gave it as his opinion that the miserable
man was some escaped convict who had gravitated up country, and who, no
doubt, imagined that the white men were in search of him with a native
tracker--anyway, it had been a very near thing with them, and nothing
but Grenville's unceasing watchfulness could have saved his cousin's
life, as it unquestionably had done, twice over.

Grenville listened in silence to Leigh's remarks, and then, turning
their backs on the mortal remains of their foe, they left him to the
eternal solitude of that vast and rocky wilderness.

Several hours of hard toil followed, during which they slowly and warily
ascended the Pass, without, however, seeing any further sign of life.
Stopping once to take a hurried mouthful of dried deer-flesh, the party
was soon again on its way, and reached the top of the Pass just before
sunset. Beyond this point all possibility of advance in any direction
seemed at an end. The mountains shot up towards the sky, based, as it
were, by a precipitous wall of rock, and flanked by mighty spurs, whose
peaks stood out, clear and sharp, some fifteen thousand feet above the
Pass, their barren and rugged sides almost beautified by the glow of the
setting sun.

The sterile appearance of the valley was, however, to some slight extent
relieved by a magnificent waterfall, which appeared to receive its
supply through a fissure in the wall of rock, whence it came sheer over
a beetling crag and fell from a height of at least one hundred feet into
a rocky basin at the very head of the Pass.

Grenville quickly bestowed his party in a small cave for the night, and
by the time they were comfortably domiciled the sun had set. He then
mounted guard whilst the others slept, and three hours later, having
aroused the Zulu, he himself turned in for a much-needed rest.

CHAPTER TWO.

AN ANXIOUS DAY.

In the morning, after a meal of dried flesh and water--an appetising
repast at which Leigh grumbled considerably--the trio l