under
there. Were they the witches?"

"It was Hassan and some of his men. They must have escaped from the
river and remained in hiding. I felt your hand in the night, and it
woke me. So, you see, you did your part. Now rest, there's a good
chap."

Mr. Hume made the boy a cooling drink, with a dose of quinine.

"I would have helped, if I could."

"You did help," said the Hunter, earnestly. "If it had not been for
you we should have been killed while we slept. You saved our lives,
just as you saved the valley by your thought of letting the water
out."

Venning was comforted. He rose up on his elbow to have another look
at Dick, saw that the colour was coming back into the white face,
and leant back on his pillow.

In the morning Muata came into the cave, staggering like a drunken
man from loss of blood, and at his heels limped the jackal with his
tongue out.

"Well?" said the Hunter.

"The last fell on the shores of the dead pool, and the last was
Hassan himself."

The chiefs bloodshot eyes roamed over the cave, until they rested on
Venning's startled face.

"On the brink of the pool he fell, and where he fell there, too, was
the Inkosikase." It seemed as if he were addressing the remark to
Venning.

"I heard her call 'Ngonyama' in the night," whispered the boy.

"Wow!"

"So the young chief told me after you had gone," said the Hunter.

Venning nodded his head.

The chief accepted the explanation. "The Inkosikase waited for the
wolf by the water's edge," he said simply, "and I smote him behind
the ear. So her spirit is at rest."

"Let me see to your wounds, chief."

"Wow! It is well my people should see them;" and the warrior went
down with unsteady steps to the village, leaving a trail of blood;
and when the people had shouted in triumph at his story of the last
fight, the medicine men took him into their charge, when his life
was in danger of escaping through one of those gaping cuts made by
Arab swords on his body.

For a fortnight Mr. Hume nursed his young friends back to health,
and for a week they sat and walked in the sun, slowly regaining
strength; and then came the first forerunner of the rains in a day
of pelting showers.

"It is the beginning," said Muata, who was proud of his newly healed
scars. "You must come down into the valley."

"There was something said about the full moon," said Mr. Hume,
suspiciously.

The chief laughed. "It was the wish of the Inkosikase; but now she