w you how _Ibomvu_ can burn!"

This speech, in Kafir, raised another roar of menace and defiance, but
the savages were not inclined to accept the invitation therein embodied,
wherefore we turned our horses' heads, and proceeded leisurely onward.

"Go on, go on," howled the mob after us. "Go and find your oxen!
They--up yonder--will know how to talk with you."

No further interruption occurred, and before us lay the tell-tale track,
as clear as need be. At length the wooded heights rose immediately in
front, and we halted for another short off-saddle.

"Now look here," began Brian, throwing himself on the ground, and
filling his pipe. "It's evident these chaps don't care whether we
follow them or not, but I believe we shall come up with them this
evening, and we shall have a little over three hours of daylight to do
it in. The sort of treatment we met with just now is a good earnest of
what we've got to expect. And there are only four of us."

"Hooray for a row!" cried Trask.

"Yes, but we don't want a row if it can possibly be avoided. We're
between the devil and the deep sea, which for present purposes may be
taken to mean that none of us must fire a shot unless our lives depend
upon it, and then, if possible, fire blank."

This oration was interrupted, and that by a thud of approaching hoof
strokes and a sound of deep voices and laughter. A track wound round
the hillside lower down, and we saw about a score of mounted Kafirs
sweep past, chattering and laughing at the top of their voices. It was
clear that this gang was returning from a visit to some canteen, for the
condition of more than one of their number was not a little precarious,
swaying and lurching in their ragged saddles as they belaboured their
wretched undersized steeds.

"All as drunk as pigs," whispered Revell. "By George! That looks like
Kuliso."

A tall, finely-made man, clad in an ancient pair of trousers and a red
blanket and wearing an ivory ring on his left arm rode at the head of
the gang, evidently a chief, for he was rather more drunk than the rest,
and seemed to occupy a greater share of attention.

"No, it isn't," returned Brian. "I don't know who it is, though." And
in a trice the weird equestrians, their red blankets streaming behind
them, were whirled out of sight, and having given them time to get
further on their way, we resumed our own.

There was nothing in itself gloomy or forbidding in the series of
densely-wo