monti!" murmured Jabula; adding, by way of injunction, "He is
sleepy with drink. Do not kill him. We will take him alive."

For a moment the induna and those inside the door stood contemplating
the sleeping figure, the fitful glare of the impromptu torch lighting
their savage faces and blood-covetous eyes. They felt no further
misgiving. The other white man would be asleep too--also drunk. What
surpassing fools these Amakiwa were.

"Wake, Lamonti," said Jabula, advancing to the arm-chair and its
occupant. "Lo, we have come to visit thee."

And those were the last words he ever spoke, for he had tripped and
stumbled over a line of taut string stretched across the room, and at
the moment he did so there was a concussion that might well have shaken
the world, together with a most awful and appalling roar; which,
however, those within or around did not even hear, inasmuch as they,
together with Lamont's homestead, had been literally blown from the face
of the earth.

When the sun rose the following morning, it rose upon a strange scene.
The site of Lamont's homestead was now represented by a huge pit
surrounded by a jumble of stones and fragments of wood and of iron--
human remains, also fragmentary, in ghastly profusion, mixed with
half-charred shields and fused and twisted metal. And outside the
radius of this indescribable ruin, an odd savage here and there was
picking himself up, and blinking dazedly as he asked a comrade what had
happened, and was surprised that though he could see the latter's lips
moving he could not hear one word of what was said. Indeed it would be
long before those who had escaped with life would recover from the shock
of that awful concussion, even if they ever did.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

THE FUGITIVES.

"But--this is surely not the way to Gandela," whispered Ancram, when
they had got over about three miles.

"Quite right. It isn't," answered Peters. "We'll get there kind of
roundabout. You see, if by any chance our trap should miss fire, and
they come after us, they'd head along the straight road to Gandela.
Where'd we be then?"

"But," objected Ancram, looking dubiously at the black line in front,
just discernible in its loom against the stars, "isn't this the line of
forest where we heard the lions that evening? We are not going into
that--at night, too--surely?"

"Right again--as to the first. For the second--wrong. We are."

"But--the lions?"

"We must chance t