odthirsty foes, in some shape or form, were close upon them, the
attacking force, nine times out of ten, existing only in his fertile
imagination, and turning out to be either hungry and inquisitive beasts
of prey, or the grey mists of early dawn rising to greet the sun.

These constant scares had naturally had the effect of inclining everyone
in the camp to cry "Wolf!" turn over in his blanket, and, after roundly
anathematising the alarmist, to go comfortably to sleep again; but when
Kenyon was roused by this man on the night in question, a single glance
convinced him that the fellow was, at all events, in desperate earnest,
for his knees knocked together, and his face was fairly grey with the
horror of some new and unexplained phenomenon, as he stammered out his
statement to the effect that several hundred men were silently creeping
upon their position, under cover of the mist, and asserting that he
could see them sufficiently clearly to count their numbers by the
moonlight.

"Let my master," he said, "open his white eyes as clear as crystal, and
see my tongue, for there is no lie upon it." Picking up his rifle,
Kenyon roused Leigh, the pair quickly following the watchman outside the
tent, and this was what they saw.

Slightly to their right, and entering ghost-like the suspected mountain
gorge, was a long train of human beings moving silently, yet swiftly,
westwards.

The camp was completely shrouded in mist, and altogether invisible to
these people passing it within stone's-throw, but its occupants by lying
down could see tolerably well beneath the thick grey curtain, which
overhung them in every direction, and it did not require a second glance
to satisfy the Europeans that the spectacle they were watching was
simply an African slave caravan, of unusually large dimensions, on the
march. For some minutes the pair gazed in silence, and then with a
fierce but subdued ejaculation, Leigh endeavoured to spring to his feet,
but was held still by the iron hand of the detective.

"Down! man, down! for your life!" he whispered. "The game is only just
beginning."

"But curse it all," growled Leigh, "don't you see that _most of the
slaves are white, and that many of them are women_?"

"I see it all," was the answer, in a stern incisive whisper, "but I see
little beyond what I expected to see when we arrived here a month ago.
Just wait a while, and if I know anything of my work, these people will
lead us to your cous