he awed solemnity of his tone could not fail to impress his hearers,
especially two of them. The boding sense of oppression in the
atmosphere, the utter wildness of the surroundings, the uneasy,
mysterious nature of their quest, and the tall gaunt figure of the old
Kafir standing in the semi-gloom beneath the funereal plumes of the
straight stemmed euphorbia, like an oracle of misfortune--all this
affected the imagination of two, at any rate, of these ordinarily
hard-headed and practical men in a fashion they could scarcely have
deemed possible. The third, however, was impervious to such influences.
There was too much involved in the material side of the undertaking.
No thought had he to spare apart from this; no scope was there for
giving free rein to his imagination.

"I think I may say we none of us have the slightest idea of turning
back!" he answered.

"Certainly not," assented the other two.

Josane looked fixedly at them for a moment. Then he said:

"It is good. Follow me--carefully, carefully. We do not want to leave
a broad spoor."

The undergrowth among the straight stiff stems of the euphorbia looked
dense and impenetrable as a wall. To the astonishment of the
spectators, the old Kafir lay flat on his stomach, lifted the dense
tangle just enough to admit the passage of his body, for all the world
as though he were lifting a heavy curtain, and slipped through.

"Come," he whispered from the other side, for he had completely
disappeared from view. "Come--as I did. But do not rend the bushes
more than is absolutely necessary."

They followed, worming their way in the same fashion about a dozen
yards. Then an ejaculation of amazement, not unmixed with alarm, broke
from the lips of Shelton, who was leading. It found an echo on those of
the other two. Their first instinct was to draw back.

They had emerged upon a narrow ledge, not of rock, or even earth; a
narrow ledge of soft, yielding, quaking moss. And it overhung what had
the appearance of a huge natural well.

It literally overhung. By peering cautiously outward they could see a
smooth perpendicular wall of red rock falling sheer and straight to a
depth of nearly two hundred feet. Three sides of the hollow--itself not
that distance in width--were similarly constituted, the fourth being a
precipitous, well-nigh perpendicular slope, with a sparse growth of
stunted bushes jotting its rugged sides. A strange, gruesome looking
hole, whose