He stopped and held the lamp down, its feeble rays showing that he was upon a broad stone laid across one of the old mine-shafts, one of those close by the ancient furnace we had discovered on our first visit. On this he now halted for a moment, partly from curiosity, partly to draw my attention to the danger. "I should like to tie some of the horses' reins together and have a decent lantern, so as to be let down to explore these places." "You couldn't," I said. "Don't you remember when we threw a stone down this one it fell some distance and then went splash into the water?" "It was the one farther on, not this one," said Denham, bending lower. "Well, you may depend upon it that there'd be no going far before coming to water." "Val!" cried my companion suddenly. "What's the matter?" "That's what some of our chaps have been doing." "What! going down to the water?" "No; exploring to find gold. Look here; they've been doing exactly what I said. Here's a rein tied round this stone with the end going right down, and--" _Crash_! "Ah! Val!" There was the sound of a couple of strokes, one falling upon the lamp, which seemed to leap down into the shaft at our feet, the other stroke falling on Denham's head; and as I sprang to his assistance I was conscious of receiving a tremendous thrust which sent me headlong downward, as if I were making a dive from the stone I tried to cross. The next minute my head came in contact with stones, strange scintillations of light flashed before my eyes, there was a roar as of thunder in my ears, and then all was blank. CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE. IN DOLEFUL DUMPS. Mine was a strange awakening to what appeared like a confused dream. There was a terrible pain in my head, and a sensation as of something warm and wet trickling down the side of my face, accompanied by a peculiar smarting which made me involuntarily raise my hand and quickly draw it away again, for I had only increased the pain. Then I lay quite still, trying to puzzle out what was the matter. At first I could only realise the fact that the darkness was intense. After a time the idea occurred that I must have been out with my troop attacking the Boers, and that a bullet had struck me diagonally on the forehead and glanced off after making the cut, which kept bleeding; but I was so stunned that a kind of veil seemed to be raised between the present and the past. "I shall think all about it soon," I mused. "It's of no use to worry after a fall." Then I wondered about Sandho, and how the poor beast had fared, a pang of mental agony shooting through me as I listened. I could not hear a sound. "He's killed," was my next thought; "for if he had been alive he would have stopped directly I fell from his back, and waited for me to remount."