shining
grey and red in the moisture, which moisture the sun was doing his best
to parch up.

The two men looked thoroughly smart and serviceable in their
khaki-coloured uniforms and helmets, each with a regulation revolver
slung round him in a holster, but no rifle. Their mounts were wiry,
hard-bitten nags of medium height, and in good condition.

"I'm still puzzling over that shot we heard," Meyrick was saying. "Why,
it seemed to come from bang in the thick of the bush; but who the deuce
would be letting off guns right there at that time of night. No nigger
would go in there then for a bribe. It's too much _tagati_. They funk
it like the devil."

"_Tagati_! I should think so," laughed Francis. "I still don't believe
it was a shot at all. I've a theory it was a sort of meteorite
exploding. Seemed to come from up in the air too."

"Sound travels the devil's own distance at night. What if it was beyond
the forest belt? There are kraals out that way."

The other was unconvinced.

"Sound does travel, as you say," he rejoined. "But for that very reason
no blooming nigger would lash off a gun in the middle of the night to
give away that there was such a thing in existence among the kraals. An
assegai or knobkerrie would do the trick just as well, and make no noise
about it. No, I stick to my meteorite theory."

"Right-oh! It's going to be damned hot," loosening his uniform jacket.
"Let's push on or we shan't get to old Halse's by dinner-time, and he
does you thundering well when you get to his shebang. Whatever they may
say about old Ben, he's the most hospitable chap you'd strike in a
lifetime."

"Isn't he a retired gun-runner--if he _has_ retired, that is?" said
Francis, who was new to that part of the country. "At least so the yarn
goes."

"The said yarn is very likely true. There are `no witnesses present,'
so I don't mind recording my private belief that it is. But there's
this to be said--that when he did anything in that line it was only when
the niggers were fighting each other, and in that case he rendered
humanity a service by helping to keep their numbers down. I don't
believe he'd trade them a single gas-pipe if they were going for us.
I've a better opinion of old Ben than that."

"Don't know. I haven't been up here so long as you; but I've heard it
said, down country, that gun-running gets into the blood. `Once a
gun-runner, always a gun-runner.' What-oh! Suppose Dinuzulu wer