"Is this the only way, Josane?" said Eustace at length, as they paused for a few minutes to recover breath, and, truth to say, to steady their nerves a trifle. Even he put the question with some diffidence, for as they drew nearer and nearer to the locality of their weird quest the old Gcaleka's manner had undergone a still further change. He had become morose and taciturn, gloomy and abstracted to a degree. "It is not," he answered. "It is the only way I know. When I came here my eyes were shut; when I went away they were open. Then I approached it from above; now we have approached from below. The way by which I left, is the way you have seen." "O Lord! I wouldn't travel the last infernal hundred yards again for a thousand pounds," muttered Hoste ruefully. "And now, I've got to do it again for nothing. I'd sooner run the gauntlet of the whole Gcaleka tribe, as we did before." "We may have to do that as well," remarked Shelton. "But I think I never did see such an utterly dismal and God-forsaken corner in my life. Looks as if Old Nick had built it out of sheer devilment." There was reason in what he said. The immense funnel-like hole seemed an extraordinary caprice of Nature. Nothing grew at the bottom but coarse herbage and a few stunted bushes. It seemed absolutely lacking in _raison d'etre_. Occurring at the top of a mountain, it would at once have suggested an ancient crater. Occurring, as it did, in solid ground on the steep slope of a lofty river bank that theory seemed not to hold good. On all sides, save the narrow defile they had come through, it was shut in by lofty wooded heights breaking here and there into a red iron-stone cliff. Their guide resumed his way, advancing in a listening attitude, and with intense caution. The ledge upon which they crept, now on all-fours, widened considerably. The projecting rock overhead jutted out further and further, till it overhung the abyss for a considerable distance. Beneath its shade they were already in semi-gloom. Crawling along, toilsomely, laboriously, one behind the other, each man with all his senses, all his faculties, on the alert, the fact that their guide had stopped came upon them as a surprise. Then, as they joined him, and crouched there side by side--each man's heart beat quicker, each man's face slightly changed colour. For the overhanging rock had heightened-- the ledge had widened to an area of fifteen or twenty feet. Flooring and rock-roof no longer met. At the bottom of this area, both yawned away from each other in a black horizontal rift. Save through this rift there was no getting any further. Quickly each mind grasped the solution. The cave yawning in front of them was-- "Where does that hole lead to, Josane?" said Hoste. "_Kwa 'zinyoka_," replied the Gcaleka, impressively.