"Come, we will waste no time. You can walk, I think. Mwesa, lead on. Find the way into the nullah. Follow him, Herr Reinecke: I shall be two paces behind you." Mwesa scampered down the steep descent like a young roe: the others followed more prudently. When Tom arrived at the rock from which he had viewed the camp, Mwesa was not to be seen. But a moment later his laughing face showed round the base of the rock, like a child playing peep-bo. "Dis way, sah," he cried; "dis way." At one side of the rock was the top of a narrow channel that wound down the face of the cliff. So steep was this latter that not even a mountain goat could have scaled it safely; but Nature had so carved the channel that it formed a zigzag pattern, like those paths which the art of man has cut in precipitous cliffs at popular resorts on our coasts. Down this rough path the two men followed Mwesa, hidden from the sight of those below by the contour of the cliff. About twenty feet above the ground the zig-zagging ceased, and the channel took a sheer drop, almost entirely concealed by bushes. While Tom, standing on a ledge of rock, wondered how the final descent was to be achieved, Mwesa had found the way. Clinging to the tough stems and branches of the bushes, he went down a few feet, then stopped and turned his face upward. "Ladder here, sah," he called. The Arab had, in fact, so bent the branches and stems, and so connected them by means of strands of creepers, as to form a light ladder that spanned the last dozen feet of the descent. Hidden by the overgrowing vegetation, it might have been passed and repassed hundreds of times without being discovered. Mwesa clambered down, and bounded among the excited people who had clustered in expectation of the m’sungu’s reappearance. After a minute or two, Reinecke emerged from the foliage, and stood glowering, an image of sullen rage, upon the negroes who had once owned him master. Fingers were pointed at him, yells of derision mocked him: even the children strutted in front of him, as if to vaunt their freedom. One of the elder men stepped forward with menacing gestures: but he was checked by a stern command from Tom, who had just appeared. He was hailed with renewed shouts of triumph; some of the people threw themselves at his feet, as slaves bow to their lord. Tom’s lips quivered; he felt a lump rise in his throat. Then he called to Mwesa, who was pouring out an eloquent story to the crowd surrounding him. "Go down to the barricade," he said. "See whether the guards are at their posts, and bring Mirambo to me." He signed to the people to fall back to their huts, and beckoned to Moses, who had been hanging on the outskirts of the crowd, looking with a somewhat nervous and sheepish air at his late master.