vivid streams, which the sharp, startling thunder-crack seemed
to accompany rather than to follow.

"This is getting a trifle sultry, and the veldt here is crusted with
ironstone," he said to himself. Then turning his horse, he held ever
downward. Half-darkened, the scene was now desolate enough--the long
slopes of the kloof, and the ridges cut clear against the livid
thundercloud. Down in the hollow several "bromvogels," the great black
hornbill of South Africa, were strutting amid the grass, uttering their
drumming bass note. These flapped away heavily on the near approach of
the horseman, and rising high overhead, were soon winging their aerial
course seemingly to the thundercloud itself.

Suddenly the horse stopped short, and, with ears cocked forward, stood
snorting, with dilated eyes gazing upon the dark line of bush in front.
Roden's meditations took to themselves wings, and drawing his revolver,
as more convenient at close quarters than the rifle, shifted the latter
into his bridle hand, and sat for a moment intently listening.

Not a sound.

It was a nerve-trying moment. The savage war-shout, the crash of
firearms, the "whiz" of assegais--that was what it would only too likely
bring forth. Still silence, save for the bass grumblings of the
thunder.

Then there was a winnowing of wings, and a huge bird arose. Roden knew
it for a vulture, of the black and non-gregarious kind. A vulture!
That meant the presence of death.

So far reassured, for the bird would not have been there had the scrub
concealed living men, he cautiously made his way between the bushes to
the spot whence he had seen the funereal scavenger arise, and again the
horse started and shied, spinning half round where he stood. One
glance, and the secret was out. In the long grass lay the body of a
man--a Kaffir.

It had been that of a savage of splendid proportions--tall, broad,
thick-set, and muscular. It lay upon its back, staring upward with
lacerated eyeless sockets, their contents torn out by the black vulture.
Otherwise it was untouched.

Stay--not quite. From a great jagged hole in the chest a very lake of
blood had welled, staining the long grass. It was a bullet hole; the
sort of gap made by a heavy Snider missile. The man had been shot. But
how? when?

The body was quite naked, and whatever it might have owned in life, in
the shape of weapons or other requisites, had disappeared. From its
aspect, not many days c