ot steal up in the
dark and surprise the men in charge of the gun. I'm always thinking
that the Boers will steal a march on us and take it some day."

"You might save yourself the trouble as far as the climbing up is
concerned. This is the worst bit; but they could do it, I feel sure, if
our sentries were lax. I don't think they'd get by them, though."

"Well, let's have a good look what it is like, now all the crags are lit
up."

They were lit up in a most wonderful way by the sun, which was just
about to dip below the horizon, and turned every lightning-shivered mass
of tumbled-together rock into a glowing state, making it look as if it
was red-hot, while the rifts and cracks which had been formed here and
there were lit up so that their generally dark depths could be searched
by the eye.

"Do you know what this place looks like?" said Dickenson.

"The roughest spot in the world," replied Drew as he lowered himself
down a perpendicular, precipitous bit which necessitated his hanging by
his hands, and then dropping four or five feet.

"No! It's just as if the giants of old had made a furnace at the top of
the kopje, and had been pouring the red-hot clinkers down the side."

"Or as if it was the slope of a volcano, and those were the masses of
pumice which had fallen and rolled down."

"So that we look like a couple of flies walking amongst lumps of sugar.
Well, yours is a good simile, but not so romantic as mine. That's a
deep crack, Drew, old chap. Like to see how far in it goes?"

"No, thanks. I want my dinner," said Lennox.

"Dinner! Mealie cake and tough stewed horse."

"Wrong," said Lennox; "it's beef to-night, for I asked."

"Beef! Don't insult the muscle-giving food of a Briton by calling tough
old draught-ox beef. I don't know but what I would rather have a bit of
_cheval_--_chevril_, or whatever they call it--if it wasn't for that
oily fat. But we might as well peep in that crack. Perhaps there's a
cavern."

"Not to-day, Bob. It's close upon mess-time."

"Hark at him! Prefers food for the body to food for the mind. Very
well. Go on; I'm at your heels."

They descended to the more level part of the granite-strewn eminence,
acknowledged the salutes of the sentries they passed, and soon after
reached the mean-looking collection of tin houses that formed the
village--though there was very little tin visible, the only portion
being a barricade or two formed of biscuit-tins, which h