sition; but the evident intention of the cunning slaver was to send in
small drafts of men to conceal themselves upon the mountain; and these,
when his own army moved up to the attack, would, at a given signal,
doubtless fall upon our friends in the rear, and thus effect a very
serious diversion in favour of Zero, at a most critical moment.

The scheme was well thought-out, but the watchfulness of Kenyon had
completely ruined it; and if the further suggestions which he now made
should prove workable, the little band might be relied upon to read
Master Zero another very severe and humiliating lesson, when he made his
intended final onset.

Briefly, Kenyon's idea consisted of an attempt to lure the second
detachment of slavers on to their utter destruction, but in view of
their prematurely taking the alarm in consequence of our friends
possibly failing to understand and correctly to answer their secret
signals, a large party was to be slipped into the long grass of the
veldt to intercept the slavers in the event of their making a push to
escape, and an endeavour was to be made to capture some of the men
alive, and force them to give up the secrets of their curious system of
aerial correspondence.

Finally it was decided that Amaxosa should set out with ten of his own
men and fifty of the warriors of the Atagbondo at moonrise, and lie in
ambush about three miles to the north of the mountain, but this party
was on no account to make any movement, except in the event of a rocket
being fired from the camp, giving them the direction of the escaping
slavers. The Zulu was especially cautioned against making fire signals
of any kind, as it was calculated that the enemy would, themselves,
probably employ these.

Little, however, did our friends know, as yet, of the devilish ingenuity
of Master Zero, who had but to suspect the very remotest possibility of
the existence of a trap to guard against it in most effectual fashion,
and that night our friends received a peculiarly unpleasant proof of his
dangerous capabilities in this direction.

The matter fell out thus:--As Kenyon, Leigh, and a party of fifty picked
men were lying noiselessly in wait in the cover from which they had that
morning driven the enemy, they were suddenly and viciously attacked,
without a moment's warning, by Zero's forerunner, in the shape of an
enormous jaguar, which severely mauled a number of the men ere he was
settled by Kenyon, who drove a Zulu asse