ew nearer together as the
painfully mysterious silence of the place impressed itself upon them.

It is not an altogether pleasant experience to find yourself alone at
night in an ordinary English coppice or plantation, a mile or two from
anywhere; but transplant that plantation into equatorial Africa, and
stand there with the knowledge that you are hundreds of miles from even
the nearest native village, people the wood with bloodthirsty foes,
lurking, keen-eyed, in every brake and covert, armed with the
treacherous spear or the ready rifle, and you will understand why Leigh
and Kenyon, ordinarily bold enough in the open, could only creep forward
with their hearts in their mouths, and felt an access of fear when a
great owl, disturbed by their cautious passage through the wood, rose
from the trees above them, waking the hush of night with a weird,
spirit-shaking hoot, and winged his way far off into the moonlight,
which was everywhere flooding the outside world with its mellow glory.

Soon, however, our friends again escaped from the lonely wooded path,
and emerged into the brilliantly-lighted open, with a magnificent range
of vision in every direction, except where the cliffs on the other side
of the kloof shot upwards quite a hundred feet beyond the height of
those now tenanted by themselves. This peculiarity, which the pair had
not previously observed, of course effectually prevented them from
seeing anything at all in the southern board, but in front and on each
side of them the veldt could be seen sweeping clear away to the skyline,
dotted here and there by clumps of bush and by moving herds of game.
Behind them the mighty rocks frowned sternly down upon the adventurers,
as if rebuking these weak creatures of an hour for disturbing with their
puny presence the mist-beshrouded slumber of these mighty monarchs of
all time.

After a short conference our friends withdrew again into the shadow of
the wood, and sat themselves down to wait patiently for the dawn,
talking all the time in a busy undertone, Leigh urging one plan of
action, whilst Kenyon was seemingly quite determined upon taking a
diametrically opposite course. Leigh wished, in fact, to move on at
once towards the north, so as to remove their persons from the tell-tale
heights before daybreak, whilst Kenyon was obstinately and aggressively
desirous to know what lay behind the frowning wall of rock in their
immediate rear, and as this meant re-descending t