ncy of means."

"That all? Well, then, buck up, old chap, because I'd lay a very
considerable bet you'll find that difficulty got over by the time you
next set foot in hot--and particularly thirsty--Durban."

Wyvern looked up keenly. Something in the other's tone struck him as
strange.

"What card have you got up your sleeve, Joe?" he said. "You let out
something about `a few months' a little while ago. Well now, I may not
know much about the native trade, but I have a devilish shrewd idea that
a man doesn't scare up a fortune at it in that time."

"You're right there--quite right--and that's the very thing we've come
out to chat about--and sniff the ozone at the same time. It'll keep
till we get there. Here's our tram."

These two were great friends. Fleetwood, indeed, was prone to declare
that he owed his life to the other's deftness and coolness on one
occasion when they had been campaigning together; a statement, however,
which Wyvern unhesitatingly and consistently pooh-poohed. Anyhow, there
was nothing that Fleetwood would not have done for him; and having lit
upon the marvellous discovery which was behind his sanguine predictions
of immediate wealth, he had written at once to Wyvern to come up and
share it.

A fresh breeze stirred the blue of the waves, as the milky surf came
tumbling up the pebbly beach with thunderous roar. Out in the roadstead
vessels were riding to their anchors, prominent among them the
blue-white hull and red funnel of the big mail steamer which had brought
Wyvern round the day before. On the right, as they faced seaward,
beyond the white boil of surf on the bar, rose the bush-clad Bluff,
capped by its lighthouse, and behind, and stretching away on the other
hand, the line of scrub-grown sandhills, beyond which rose the wooded
slopes of the Berea.

"Now we're all right," pronounced Fleetwood, leading the way along the
beach. "We've got the whole show to ourselves and we know it. Not a
soul can get within earshot of us and we not know it, which is important
if you've got anything important to talk about."

"Yes," assented Wyvern, lighting his pipe. "Now--drive ahead. Found a
gold mine, eh?"

"That's just about what it is; only it's not a gold mine in the ordinary
sense of the word. It's buried gold."

"The deuce it is. Where?"

"That's what I'm coming to. Now listen. There exists a certain Zulu of
my acquaintance, a head-ringed man named Hlabulana. I have kno