John gave him the materials somewhat reluctantly. Ferrier pressed his hand and slid away into the darkness. Time passed very slowly. The men grew fidgety; John heard the strange gulping in their throats, and the little noises they made as they moved worried him, lest they were heard in the camp. True, there were other sounds: the hum of insects, a lion’s roar in the distance, the laughing bark of a hyena; but these were momentary, not continuous like the rustling of the grass, which there was no breeze to account for. As minute after minute passed, and there was still no sign, John grew more and more anxious. The boma was less than two hundred yards distant. He durst not strike a light to look at his watch, but surely there had been time to go and come and go again. What was happening? Ferrier, stealing across the ground with no more sound than a snake might have made, guided always by the faint glow from the fires, had covered, as he guessed, two-thirds of the distance when he thought it prudent to drop upon hands and knees, lest, upright, his form should be descried by some keen-sighted sentry. He had crawled thus some twenty yards further when suddenly he saw dimly before him a something, like an irregular hedge, no more than four feet high, stretching athwart his path. Was this the boma? Surely it bespoke unusual security in the enemy if they had contented themselves with so low a defence. Their bomas were commonly six feet high or more. He crept on more stealthily until he touched the obstruction: it was a thorny hedge. He tried to peer through it, expecting to see the camp-fires; but he looked into blackness, save for the dull red glow in the sky. Was it possible that the enemy were not so confident after all, but had erected a double barrier? Or was the hedge natural? He crawled to the left. The hedge had a regular curve. It must have been placed by men. Raising himself gradually to his feet until his eyes were just level with the top, he looked over. Yes; there was the true boma, a dark mass thirty feet away. Through its interstices he saw streaks of dim light from the fires burning within. To set fire to the outer hedge would be useless; within the boma the enemy would be still secure, and the conflagration would but give them light to take aim at their assailants. He must cross the hedge.