lly ascending kloof on each side
of the first of the two great mountains. Without a moment's hesitation
Renshaw had taken the left-hand one--heading indeed south-westerly.

"You can't get anywhere by the other way, Sellon. Nothing but blind
alleys ending in a krantz."

Half an hour or so of rough uphill travelling, and they halted on a
grassy _nek_. And now the two great mountains stood forth right against
their line of march. Rising up, each in a steep, unbroken grassy slope,
they could not have been less than three thousand feet from the valley
which girdled their base like the trench of an old Roman encampment.
The crest of each was belted around by a smooth perpendicular wall of
cliff of about a third of the height of the mountain itself, gleaming
bronze red in the shimmering glow, barred here and there with livid
perpendicular streaks, showing where a colony of aasvogels had found a
nesting-place, possibly from time immemorial, among the ledges and
crannies upon its inaccessible face.

"By Jove!" cried Sellon, as, after a few minutes' halt, they rode along
the hillside opposite to and beneath the two majestic giants. "By Jove,
but I never saw such an extraordinary formation! Some of those
turret-heads we passed on our way down to Selwood's were quaint enough--
but these beat anything. Why, they're as like as two peas. And--the
size of them. I say, though, what a view of the country we should get
from the top."

"Should! Yes, if we could only reach it. But we can't. The krantz is
just as impracticable all round as on this side. I tried the only place
that looked like a way, once. It's round at the back of the second one.
There's a narrow rocky fissure all trailing with maidenhair-fern--
masses and masses of it. Well, I suppose I climbed a couple of hundred
feet, and had to give up. Moreover, it took me the best part of the day
to come down again, for if I hadn't called all my nerve into play, and
patience too, it would only have taken a fraction of a second--and--the
fraction of every bone in my anatomy. No. Those summits will never be
trodden by mortal foot--unless some fellow lands there in a balloon,
that is."

An hour of further riding and they had reached the extreme end of the
second gigantic turret. Here again was a grassy _nek_, connecting the
base of the latter with the rugged and broken ridges on the left.
Hitherto they had been ascending by an easy gradient. Now Renshaw,
striking