The curator took the missile and examined its head carefully. It was made of a blood-red, six-sided crystal, thinned to a point and lustrous and polished. “Cinnabar, boys!” he exclaimed. “This tribe know all about Red Mountain. That’s why they wouldn’t let us go south, and it’s why the southern tribe at Wamberibi would not let the English go north, too! I bet we see it when we reach this cone top!” They pressed on swiftly, the vegetation now scattered and consisting only of the most arid and gnarly species, all plentifully provided with thorns. “Look, _Orang-kaya_!” called Baderoon, hastily, pointing back down the mountain. Five small hill men were climbing after them on the slopes. “Never mind them. Put out for the top, boys,” shouted the curator, running after them. “We’ve got to get there and dig in before any flanking parties cut us off.” They raced up over the lava-strewn slopes. The top of the mountain was a bare cone, with a deep, narrow crater, perhaps fifty feet in bore, extending down into it. A faint odor of sulphur came up from its dark depths. Around the lip was fine lava dust and small rocks. For at least fifty yards down the slopes there was no cover of any sort. “You and Sadok stand off those beggars, Dwight. Dig in on the rim of the crater and pick ’em off. Here’s where we make our stand for the present,” ordered the curator, as he and the rest of the party ran around the crater to the south. They pawed shallow pits in the detritus and lay down, watching the slopes below. No pygmies had come in sight yet, but there was much that was interesting to study. Out of the jungle clearing on the opposite mountain, beyond them to the south, rose the smoke of a huge signal fire, and their glasses could make out huts in the trees near it. To the east, the long wall of the Great Precipice stretched southward, halving one side of the mountain ranges, with the green of the lowland jungle swarming up to its base. Near its brink was a small clearing and yet another pygmy village. It was their country, all right! But to the southeast rose a sight that held them all breathless. The geological formation in the interior was dark and stratified, of basic instead of volcanic rock, and the ragged edges of thin coal seams could be picked out running through the jungle along bare escarpments. Before them rose sheer a truncated cone of a mountain, separated from the interior formations by a deep gap. Its whole upper half was bare of jungle, and across it, in a horizontal belt, ran a vein of deep pink, at least four hundred feet from top to bottom!