The old Boer crossed his hands on his breast, closed his eyes, and his lips moved, as Gray supposed, in prayer. The deserter sat down beside the aged Du Plessis; Madame Vander Roey, accompanied by Lyle, left the cave. On emerging from it, into the clear moonlit air, the latter saw that the whole bivouac was astir; there were some forty men and eight or nine women, several children, and a motley assembly of Hottentots, half-castes, and bushmen. These gathered together in a group near Madame Vander Roey, and the beads of approaching men and horses soon appeared above the long waving grass of the little plain, on which the encampment was spread in somewhat disorderly fashion. The equestrian party came up leisurely, after the manner of those who bring no cheerful or decided tidings. The atmosphere was clear and light as that of day. Madame Vander Roey said, in a low voice, to Lyle, "There is no good news!" And so it proved. Vander Roey had not even bees admitted to an interview with Sir John Manvers; indeed, there was little time for treating with any one; for, as we have shown, the brand and the spear were abroad, and the colonists were looking with anxious eyes for the "sea-wagons from across the broad waters," and their freights of "red men." The captain of the bivouac, Lodewyk, a boater, with a race almost covered with hair, arms bared to the elbow, but garnished, Kafir fashion, with bangles of brass, and a ring of ivory, a large straw hat on his head, and equipped with leather trowsers, girded with a belt containing immense pistols, and carrying besides an elephant gun, stepped forwards as Vander Roey swung himself from his jaded horse, and said, in a loud, distinct voice, in the Dutch language, "Vander Roey, is it peace or war with our white brothers?" "War," replied the Boer leader, abruptly, and strode on without greeting his wife, who followed him to the cave. "War!" shouted Lodewyk--"War!" echoed Lyle; and Lodewyk, recognising the trader, whom he had had dealings with of late, turned to Lyle, and offered his hand. Lyle grasped it. "Let us smoke a pipe of tobacco together," said Lodewyk, and the two men strolled off towards the habitation of the latter; it was a domicile, half hut, half tent, formed of withered boughs and skins, and screened from the east by a scarp of rock, on which many a grotesque and unnatural-looking creature was depicted in yellow ochre and different-coloured chalks. Circumstances conspired to induce Lyle to develop his plans and purposes sooner than he had first intended; there was something in the bearing of Lodewyk that chimed in with his own feverish desire to be up and doing; and, on the other hand, Lodewyk had been attracted by the hearty, dare-devil style in which the Englishman had flung up his hat, in the moonlight, and shouted "War! war! to the knife!"