s. Either there is some
animal near at hand, which you may shoot for supper; or, as I earnestly
hope may be the case, he scents water. Cock your gun, and go after
him."

"I am afraid there is but little chance of his finding water here," said
Ernest, as Wilmore hastened forward. "There is nothing to be seen
anywhere but hard crag-stone and dry sand. But he may put up some game
among the rocks there which he is scrambling up. Ha! and so he has," he
added the moment after, as a steinbok came bounding down the cliff.
"Now, then, to test Captain Renton's rifle."

He drew the trigger as he spoke, and the animal dropped on its knees,
but rose the next minute and was making off, when a shot from Lavie
again brought it down. They ran up and found that the steinbok was
already dead. Ernest's bullet had struck it in the side, and inflicted
what would probably have proved a mortal wound, though it would, for the
time, have succeeded in effecting its escape. But Lavie had aimed
directly at the heart, and his shot having gone true, death was
instantaneous.

"Hurrah!" shouted Frank, at this moment, waving his cap on the shelf of
rock above. "Three cheers for old Lion. It is all right now."

"All right as regards the meat, Frank," said Nick, "but how about the
drink? A fellow in this wicked world requires to drink as well as to
eat--at all events, I do."

"Meat," repeated Frank, peering over the edge of the precipice, which
might perhaps be a dozen feet in height. "Have you got any meat? Did
you kill anything when you fired just now?"

"To be sure we did, Frank," said Warley. "We're not given to miss in
our part of the world. We've brought down as nice a young steinbok as
you'd wish to eat. If you'd only find us some water to match, we should
be quite set up."

"Water! why, that is just what we _have_ found. Here has old Lion
lighted on a well of water, the most delicious that any fellow ever
drank of."

"Water! what, up there? You don't say so. Hurrah! here goes." Laying
down their guns, the three thirsty travellers speedily climbed the stony
heights, and stood by their companion's side, when their eyes were
gratified by a very strange as well as a very welcome spectacle.

In the very middle of the plateau of rock surmounting the precipitous
ascent appeared a circular hole, some three or four feet in diameter,
and so deep, that its bottom could not be discerned. The cavity was
evidently natural; nor i