like a fiend, shrieking in the abandonment of
his despair, and notwithstanding the noose round him, and the efforts
of the men who held his legs, the advancing wretches were for the moment
unable to accomplish their purpose, which, horrible and incredible as it
seems, was _to put the red-hot pot upon his head_.

I sprang to my feet with a yell of horror, and drawing my revolver fired
it by a sort of instinct straight at the diabolical woman who had been
caressing Mahomed, and was now gripping him in her arms. The bullet
struck her in the back and killed her, and to this day I am glad that
it did, for, as it afterwards transpired, she had availed herself of the
anthropophagous customs of the Amahagger to organise the whole thing in
revenge of the slight put upon her by Job. She sank down dead, and as
she did so, to my terror and dismay, Mahomed, by a superhuman effort,
burst from his tormenters, and, springing high into the air, fell dying
upon her corpse. The heavy bullet from my pistol had driven through
the bodies of both, at once striking down the murderess, and saving her
victim from a death a hundred times more horrible. It was an awful and
yet a most merciful accident.

For a moment there was a silence of astonishment. The Amahagger had
never heard the report of a firearm before, and its effects dismayed
them. But the next a man close to us recovered himself, and seized his
spear preparatory to making a lunge with it at Leo, who was the nearest
to him.

"Run for it!" I shouted, setting the example by starting up the cave as
hard as my legs would carry me. I would have made for the open air if
it had been possible, but there were men in the way, and, besides, I
had caught sight of the forms of a crowd of people standing out clear
against the skyline beyond the entrance to the cave. Up the cave I went,
and after me came the others, and after them thundered the whole crowd
of cannibals, mad with fury at the death of the woman. With a bound I
cleared the prostrate form of Mahomed. As I flew over him I felt the
heat from the red-hot pot, which was lying close by, strike upon my
legs, and by its glow saw his hands--for he was not quite dead--still
feebly moving. At the top of the cave was a little platform of rock
three feet or so high by about eight deep, on which two large lamps were
placed at night. Whether this platform had been left as a seat, or as a
raised point afterwards to be cut away when it had served its