"That great god, the African explorer, don't know everything," he said--"no, not quite everything, although he thinks he does. Anyway, he frequently manages to get a pretty muddled-up idea of things and places hereabout--a muddle which the natives of this land would rather thicken than dispel. For instance, he will ask the name of a river or a mountain, and when the other party to the talk repeats his question, as natives invariably do to gain time for answering, he takes this for the answer, and forthwith the thing is dubbed by a word that simply means 'river' or 'mountain,' in one or other of the hundred and fifty tongues which prevail hereabout. No, the existence of the Ba-gcatya is not chronicled, simply because the explorer was fortunate enough not to fall in with them. Had he done so, he would probably never have returned to chronicle anything. But, get one or two of our Wangoni to talk, and he may, or may not, tell you something about them; for the Ba-gcatya are, like the Wangoni themselves, a Zulu offshoot, only far more conservative in the old Zulu traditions, and of purer blood. They are a much finer race, indeed I believe them to be as powerful and well disciplined as the Zulus themselves were under Cetywayo. I was all through the war of '79, you know, and that pretty scar I carry about as an ornament represents the expiring effort of an awful tough customer, who had lost too much blood to be able to strike altogether home. I call it my Isandhlwana medal." "That where you captured it, eh?" said Laurence, with interest, for the story was new to him. He remembered first noticing the great scar upon Hazon's chest the day he visited him when ill in bed at Johannesburg, but he had never asked its history; indeed, it was characteristic of the strange relations in which these two men stood to each other that, notwithstanding all this time of close comradeship, neither should ever have asked the other any question of a personal nature. Characteristic, too, was it of Hazon's method that this piece of information should have been vouchsafed as it was. Many an experience, strange and startling, had he narrated from time to time, but never for the sake of narrating it. If anything occurred to bring it forth, out it would come, carrying, perhaps, others in its train, but ever in due sequence. Even Holmes, the impulsive, who, being young, was the 'natural man' of the trio, had long since learned that to ask Hazon for a yarn was the direct way not to get one out of him. "Yes," went on Hazon, "that's where I captured it. Speaking with some experience, Isandhlwana is the toughest thing that has ever travelled my way, and I don't hanker after any repetition of it with 'The people of the Spider----' Why, what does this mean?" The words, quick, hurried, broke off. On the faces of both men was a look of keen, anxious alertness. For a wild and fierce clamour had suddenly arisen and was drawing nearer and nearer, loud, swelling, threatening.