With beating hearts the two men crawled quietly from the bush in which they were ensconced, and crept, well under the lee of more bush, towards the ladder. Up to half an hour ago they had heard voices about the camp and the lowing of cattle. The voices had ceased, and the cattle had evidently been driven down hill to pasture; all was now quiet. If any one remained in camp it would be Jan Kokerboom, and presumably he would be asleep. Very slowly, very cautiously, the two men crawled on hands and knees towards the ladder. The journey was safely accomplished. They lay now by the ladder of rope and hide, seventy yards only from the camp, but concealed from it by some high bush and a little group of wild olive trees. Karl Engelbrecht now nodded to his henchman to begin the descent. Quasip little liked the job; but he was the servant of an iron-willed and ruthless master, and he knew he had to go through with it. Rising very cautiously, he gripped the upper part of the ladder and went over the side. It was a breathless moment for both. The Hottentot, his face deeply puckered with anxiety, began the downward climb. Engelbrecht shuffled his huge form to the edge of the cliff and saw his man’s descent. He watched him till the lower angle of the cliff concealed him from view. The movement of the ladder presently ceased. Quasip had reached the bottom. His own turn had now come. Mingled with some natural feeling of suspense was also a sense of elation. His man was down the cliff; half their difficulties were over. In ten minutes he himself would be safely at the foot, near to that great pile of gold--and then revenge and plunder. The blood of his hated enemies and a vast treasure would be his. But Karl Engelbrecht, cleverly as he and his Hottentot had laid their plans, and made their approach to the ladder, had overlooked or never suspected one elemental fact in the situation. They were in complete ignorance that on the previous night Poeskop, their arch-enemy Poeskop, whom they now supposed to be far away up the kloof, digging for gold with his masters, had ascended the ladder. And Poeskop for the last five minutes had been attentively regarding Karl Engelbrecht. Something--he never afterwards could explain satisfactorily why or how it was--but something that morning had impelled him to remain in camp, mending his old, ragged pair of trousers, and to send Jan Kokerboom, who loved stalking and was not difficult to persuade, to shoot a head of game down the hill. While Poeskop sat silent and reflective, under the shade of the wagon, patching his old breeches, some faint sound, or vibration rather, from the direction of the edge of the cliff, caught his preternaturally sharp ears. He listened. Yes, he was certain now: there was a sound from the direction of the ladder. He knew that sound, but it puzzled him why he should hear it just then. None of his masters could be climbing upward!