point near the spot where the river disappears.  The passage is safe, but can only be taken provided a candle or torch is used.  If these directions should come under the notice of some unhappy traveller, let him accept my earnest wishes for success in his efforts to escape from a place which to me was first a haven of rest and then a hateful prison, and there is a feeling I have that I have not written this in vain.”

The son of the lonely Englishman who had written the foregoing in sadness of spirit, but in hope for others, sat long staring before him with a lump in his throat.

“Not in vain, my father—­not in vain did you labour,” he murmured.  Again he read over the directions, then very carefully he packed the journal and strapped it on his back, to be with him wherever he went.  Noticing how the time had passed while he had been receiving the message from the dead, he hurried to the gorge to see if there were any signs of his friends, and his eyes went to the dark walls, and to the silent pool far below, with a feeling of intense repugnance at the thought of the ghoulish women who lurked unseen, but seeing all.

“Have you seen Ngonyama?”

“The smoke ascends no longer, Inkose; but we have seen the signal answered.”

“How so?”

“Another smoke arose yet further off, and yet another, and beyond that another, till the word of the fire-makers was passed back even to the wide waters.”

“Then it was not Ngonyama who made the fire.”

“It was made by the enemy, Inkose.”

“Have you sent out spies?”

“Of what use, lion’s cub?  Muata, the black one, hangs on their trail, and when the time has come he will spring.  Wow!  They are fools to come up by that path.”

He went back deep in thought, and made up his mind to see the wise woman again.  So he passed down into the valley, crossed the river to the new village built on a small flat-topped hill, and found the chief’s mother sitting before his hut.

“I want my brothers,” he said at once.

“The valley is open—­search for them.  You are a chief; put the men to the search.  Why come to me?”

“Because you only know.”

“Haw!  If they are not in the valley they are out of the valley, and once they are out they have broken the law.  Who am I that you should ask, since the law is made by the men?”

“Maybe, mother, they are not in the valley or out of the valley.”

She threw a startled look at Compton, which he was keen to notice; then, with an expression of puzzlement, she nodded her head.

“Your meaning is dark, lion’s cub.  See, the valley is kraaled in like the goat-pen, and if the goats be not in the kraal they are outside the kraal.  As for Ngonyama, see where the women build his hut against his coming.”

“I see,” said Compton.  “Perhaps he was sent for by the chief, and has gone a journey, for the enemy are on the move.”