ove--move away with a rasping noise--and there was a hole wide enough
to give passage to a man's body. Two or three heads appeared against
this and were withdrawn, amid mutterings in an unknown tongue.

"I saw something drop down the rock till it reached the bottom of the
den. It was a line. Immediately a man, passing himself backwards
through the hole, slid down this. I, crouching in shadow, was unseen by
him, and, gripping my weapons, I gathered myself for a spring, for I
could see that deliverance was to be now or never, and resolved with all
my might that it should be now.

"He dropped upon the rocky floor, and stood upright. He was entirely
naked, and in build and feature very like the mountain tribe against
whom we had been fighting. He was armed with an assegai and battle-axe,
and as he stood there rolling his eyes around, I could see the three
miserable wretches shivering and speechless with fear.

"He made one spring, and drove his assegai through the body of the
foremost; then, not waiting till the wretch was dead, he knelt upon the
still struggling carcase, and with the axe hacked off the head, flinging
it with a laugh across the horrible hole. It bounded over the crackling
bones, nearly striking me where I sat. Then, dragging the spouting
carcase to the line, he began to make fast the feet preparatory to the
hauling of it up.

"Now, I began to see clearly where I was, and all manner of tales heard
in childhood crowded back. Not these miserable beings, who were shut up
in this place, were eaters of men--though probably they had been driven
by hunger to devour the corpse of Gungana. Those who kept them there
were the cannibals, and now I remembered wild and hideous legends of
just such practices current among certain of the mountain tribes, and
how their captives were shut up in caves or hollows and eaten one by one
as they were required. I saw, too, how it was that the place was strewn
with skulls. For some dark reason or other the heads were flung away
here as I had seen this one flung. Those whom I had first found here
were `cattle.' It was the slaughterhouse of the _Izimu_.

"As the man bent down to knot the feet of the corpse to the line, I
stepped lightly up behind him, and with one swift blow of my heavy
knobstick shattered his skull to atoms. Then, tying around me the end
of the line, which was of raw hide and strong, I signed to the two still
alive that they should call to those abo