The last marches of Ali ben Hoosein's road had been little travelled during these latter months of political upheaval, and this meant that the ever-growing bush had encroached, and passage was difficult. Moreover, food was painfully scarce. Swizzle-Stick Smith, out of his scanty store, had given them what he could, but this was soon eaten, and once more they had been forced to fall back on that marvellous thing, the kola nut. But though nibbling kola puts off the desire for a meal, and makes one able to endure prolonged strains, it does not fill gaps in the inside. Both Carter and the Krooboy were very gaunt, and tattered, and savage-looking when at last they arrived at the rock and the river; but the omens seemed to change from that moment. To begin with, Carter had a snap-shot at a gazelle and brought it down. They lit a fire where they were, ate, and felt the blessedness of being full for the first time for a fortnight. Then, whilst hunting for a site for a hut, they came across a clump of plantains, wild certainly, and coarse, but filling enough to men who had long outgrown any niceties of palate. And at the farther side of the plantains, what appeared to be a mere cubical mound of greenery disclosed itself upon inspection to be a house. "Ghosts," whimpered White-Man's-Trouble, and shrank back. "I hope so," said Carter. "They'd give us local news, anyway, and might be amusing to talk to. But I never met ghosts outside a story-book, and I'm afraid there'll be none here. I wonder who lived on this spot? Stone house, with limed walls three feet six thick, and a flat cement roof. Inside area--phew! it smells musty--twenty feet by twelve. No, by Christopher! there's another room on beyond. Storeroom that--oh, beg pardon, Mr. Snake. My mistake. Good-afternoon!" He shot out into the open again by the doorway, and several snakes who resided in the farther room made exit by the window. "When in doubt as to the authorship of any West African monument, one always puts it down to the early Portuguese," Carter mused, "and we'll leave it at that for the present. Original occupants have been gone any time these last two hundred years. Well, if we strip off these vines and creepers from the outside, and light fires inside to sweeten the air a bit, we shall have the most palatial quarters. The question now is whether there is a mine and whether it is worth working." But that last point very quickly answered itself. Three great veins of tin-stone sliced vertically into the mother rock. Two of them were forty feet wide, the third was sixty. The face ran up at a steep angle, and a great beer-colored river swilled away at its foot, and undermined it, and with the help of the sun, kept chattering screes always cascading down the slope.