Well, sir, we struggled on through the hills for a matter of ten miles; till at last, after descending a crag, we saw opening out in front of us a ravine so sombre and dark that it might have been the gate of Hades itself; cliffs many hundred feet shut in on every side the gloomy boulder-studded passage which led through the haunted defile into Kaffirland.  The moon, rising above the crags, threw into strong relief the rough, irregular pinnacles of rock by which they were topped, while all below was dark as Erebus.

“The Sasassa Valley?” said I.

“Yes,” said Tom.

I looked at him.  He was calm now; the flush and feverishness had passed away; his actions were deliberate and slow.  Yet there was a certain rigidity in his face and glitter in his eye which showed that a crisis had come.

We entered the pass, stumbling along amid the great boulders.  Suddenly I heard a short, quick exclamation from Tom.  “That’s the crag!” he cried, pointing to a great mass looming before us in the darkness.  “Now, Jack, for any favour use your eyes!  We’re about a hundred yards from that cliff, I take it; so you move slowly toward one side and I’ll do the same toward the other.  When you see anything, stop and call out.  Don’t take more than twelve inches in a step, and keep your eye fixed on the cliff about eight feet from the ground.  Are you ready?”

“Yes.”  I was even more excited than Tom by this time.  What his intention or object was I could not conjecture, beyond that he wanted to examine by daylight the part of the cliff from which the light came.  Yet the influence of the romantic situation and my companion’s suppressed excitement was so great that I could feel the blood coursing through my veins and count the pulses throbbing at my temples.

“Start!” cried Tom; and we moved off, he to the right, I to the left, each with our eyes fixed intently on the base of the crag.  I had moved perhaps twenty feet, when in a moment it burst upon me.  Through the growing darkness there shone a small, ruddy, glowing point, the light from which waned and increased, flickered and oscillated, each change producing a more weird effect than the last.  The old Kaffir superstition came into my mind, and I felt a cold shudder pass over me.  In my excitement I stepped a pace backward, when instantly the light went out, leaving utter darkness in its place; but when I advanced again, there was the ruddy glare glowing from the base of the cliff.  “Tom, Tom!” I cried.

“Ay, ay!” I heard him exclaim, as he hurried over toward me.

“There it is—­there, up against the cliff!”

Tom was at my elbow.  “I see nothing,” said he.

“Why, there, there, man, in front of you!” I stepped to the right as I spoke, when the light instantly vanished from my eyes.