"

"By continued practice. I used to walk up the path over and over again,
and let them throw the thong over me. Then the woman was always there
with the club, so that, if one of the thongs missed, she was ready to
strike. I, also, was usually ready to help, in case of necessity."

"Why did you think it necessary to take the cartridges out of my
revolver?"

"Because I feared you from the first, and were it not that he"--baring
his teeth and glancing at Langley, who shuddered--"looked so nice, and
that we wanted fresh meat so badly, I would not have risked bringing
you. But it would have been all right if I had only let your revolver
alone."

"You say Umhlonhlo has brought you plenty of food; did you ever get any
one besides ourselves and the other two policemen to come up here by
telling them that story?"

"Yes, two others--one a man who was searching for gold on the Free State
side of the mountains, and the other a trader whom I met at Maseru. But
these each came alone."

"I see the buckle of a woman's belt in there. Whom did that belong to?
You surely never got a white woman up here?"

"Yes, we did," said Ghamba, with a horrible half-smile which bared the
gums high above the sockets of his tusks. "She was a young girl who had
strayed from a waggon passing over the mountain by the Ladysmith road,
only a day's walk from here. I pretended to show her the shortest way
to her waggon, and thus brought her as far as she could walk in this
direction. I then killed her, and came up here and fetched my sons. We
carried her up in the night. She was very young and plump, and I have
never eaten anything that I enjoyed so much." (Whitson turned cold
with horror. He remembered the girl's mysterious disappearance, and the
fruitless searches undertaken in consequence.) "His flesh"--glancing
again at Langley--"looks something like hers did, and I am sure it would
taste just as nice. There was still a little of her left when I went
away last week. If you will go in there and look where the rock is split
on the right-hand side, you will--" But he did not finish the sentence,
for a bullet from Whitson's revolver crushed through his brain, and he
tumbled forward on his face into the fire.

It was only after tremendous difficulty that Whitson and Langley
succeeded in escaping from the mountains. However, on the evening of the
third day after their adventure in the cave, they came in sight of the
police camp. Whitson sat down on