“The direction should be there,” he said, pointing ahead; “but there’s nothing but a dead wall.”

They ranged up and down in a fruitless attempt to pick up the lost spoor, and came back to the two rocks.

“Maybe she did not pass this way, sir.”

“A sign is a sign, and a spoor a spoor.  She passed between these rocks this morning.”

“Then she must have come down the wall;” and Venning, stepping forward, placed his hand on the rock.  He started back and stared up at the rock.  Then he touched it again, with a curious look in his face, and next placed his ear against it.  “Come here, sir.”

Mr. Home went forward, and, placing his hand on the rock, felt it vibrating.  Then he placed his ear to the rock.

“What do you hear?” asked Venning.

“A noise like the roar of the sea.”

“Or the rush of a great body of water.”

“Seek ye the honey-bee, O Spider.”

They whipped round at the mocking voice, and saw the Inkosikase standing a few feet off, having come upon them with great quietness.

“Where is the young chief?” asked Mr. Hume at once.

“Be not afraid, great one.  He sits over the ‘familiar’ of his father, learning wisdom and strong medicine.  And is your medicine at fault, great one, that you should set snares in the path for a woman, as boys do for the coneys?”

She laughed, and the great one caught hold of his beard, as he eyed her, wondering whether the time had come to make her speak.

“Is it honey ye seek, O Spider, young chief who watches always?”

“It is honey, mother.”  Venning tapped the rock.  “Ye may hear the bees humming within.  We would enter the hive.”

She laughed again.  “Ohe! ye are too wise for me, ye two.  If I did not show you the way, I see ye would find it.”

She stepped past them, walked a few paces, then, with one hand upreaching to a knob of rock, and a naked toe in a notch, she climbed up the height of a man, stepped to a ledge, and held a hand down to Venning.  A few steps along the ledge, when they stood by her side, brought them to a depression in the cliff.  Removing a few stones, she said with a look of sadness—­

“Behold the depth that was my secret, and is now yours.”

A gush of moist air came out of the dark opening, bringing with if the sound of hoarse mutterings.  Now they had found the opening, they did not know what to do, far; it was not inviting, and they stood looking at it warily: 

“You would have me enter first,” she said quietly.  “Come, then, for it is not all dark within.”

She disappeared, and Mr. Hume followed next, with a whisper to Venning that they must not let her get out of sight.  A little way they passed along a narrow passage, facing a rushing current of moist air, and then stepped out into a cavern dimly lit by a shaft of light that crept through the roof.  The woman crossed the floor, and they followed her down another passage, into another cavern larger than the first.  This, too, was dimly lit, and as they stood with a feeling of mystery and uncertainty that comes to men when they quit the surface bathed in light fop the-dark underground, they felt the floor vibrate under their feet, and heard, as if the source of the uproar were near at hand, a great booming with a shrill note at intervals.