About six o’clock Tom sprang to his feet and seized his sticks. “I can stand it no longer, Jack,” he cried; “up with your crowbar, and hey for Sasassa Valley! To-night’s work, my lad, will either make us or mar us! Take your six-shooter, in case we meet the Kaffirs. I daren’t take mine, Jack,” he continued, putting his hands upon my shoulders--“I daren’t take mine; for if my ill luck sticks to me to-night, I don’t know what I might not do with it.” Well, having filled our pockets with provisions, we set out, and, as we took our wearisome way toward the Sasassa Valley, I frequently attempted to elicit from my companion some clue as to his intentions. But his only answer was: “Let us hurry on, Jack. Who knows how many have heard of Wharton’s adventure by this time! Let us hurry on, or we may not be first in the field!” Well, sir, we struggled on through the hills for a matter of ten miles; till at last, after descending a crag, we saw opening out in front of us a ravine so sombre and dark that it might have been the gate of Hades itself; cliffs many hundred feet shut in on every side the gloomy boulder-studded passage which led through the haunted defile into Kaffirland. The moon, rising above the crags, threw into strong relief the rough, irregular pinnacles of rock by which they were topped, while all below was dark as Erebus. “The Sasassa Valley?” said I. “Yes,” said Tom. I looked at him. He was calm now; the flush and feverishness had passed away; his actions were deliberate and slow. Yet there was a certain rigidity in his face and glitter in his eye which showed that a crisis had come. We entered the pass, stumbling along amid the great boulders. Suddenly I heard a short, quick exclamation from Tom. “That’s the crag!” he cried, pointing to a great mass looming before us in the darkness. “Now, Jack, for any favour use your eyes! We’re about a hundred yards from that cliff, I take it; so you move slowly toward one side and I’ll do the same toward the other. When you see anything, stop and call out. Don’t take more than twelve inches in a step, and keep your eye fixed on the cliff about eight feet from the ground. Are you ready?” “Yes.” I was even more excited than Tom by this time. What his intention or object was I could not conjecture, beyond that he wanted to examine by daylight the part of the cliff from which the light came. Yet the influence of the romantic situation and my companion’s suppressed excitement was so great that I could feel the blood coursing through my veins and count the pulses throbbing at my temples.