The latter had not been so completely alone as he had supposed. Yard upon yard, mile upon mile, his footsteps had been dogged by these human--or hardly human--sleuth-hounds. Their ghoul-like exultation when they had discovered another lost white man, within what was to them as its web is to a spider, had known no bounds. _Another_! Yes. For more than one traveller had disappeared already within that trackless thirst-belt, never to be heard of again either in life or death. To these, and such as these, this unfathomable tract of thirst-land was nothing. To the whisky-and-soda drinking Englishman, with his artificial wants, and general lack of resource and utter deficiency in the bump of locality, it was, as in the case of the one lying here, a tomb. To the lithe, serpentine savage, whose draught of water, and mess of coarse _impupu_, or mealie porridge--when he could get it--it was a joke. These two had learned this, and had turned it to account, even as they were about to turn it to account again. They had been on the spoor of the wanderer from the very first, with hardly more to eat or drink than he. But then, they had not started after spending a night toasting the Jameson Raid. Now they looked at each other, and there was a complete inventory in each devilish glance. Summed up, it read: A suit of clothes; item a shirt, boots; item a revolver and a knife--which he was too exhausted and which they would not give him time to use; item a watch and chain-- tradeable at some distant time and place; certainly some money-- available immediately. The horse, too. They need not trouble about it now. They would find it easily enough afterwards, and then what a feast! Of a truth their Snake was favourable to them again! There lay the victim--there lay the prey. Gliding like evil wood-demons from the edge of the trees they were over him now. One more glance exchanged. Each had got his role. The doomed man lay still, with eyes closed, and a churn of froth at the corners of the swollen lips. One slowly raised his axe to bring it down on the skull. The other gripped aloft his assegai. Both could not miss, and it was as well to provide against contingencies--when--