ed passage. Hardly could he believe there was not. But,
even as heretofore, he could not find it, and despondently he once more
turned his horse to ride back to the waggons.

Suddenly the animal shied, and dropping his nose to the ground sniffed
at something and then backed away, snorting. The white round object
which had caused the alarm needed no second glance. It was a human
skull.

Yet another lay there, its fleshless eye-holes staring upward from the
grass. Scattered around were fragments of broken bones.

Gerard looked up. In his meditative fit he had ridden abstractedly, not
seeing where he was going. Now he found himself at the foot of a great
rock, and a cold shiver ran through his frame, for he recognised it as
the rock called _Izinyo_, "The Tooth." It was the rock of
slaughter--"the tooth that eats," as Vunawayo had grimly put it.

For various reasons he had always avoided this locality. He had no sort
of an inclination to explore it--very much the reverse--and he feared
lest in doing so he might unconsciously be offending the superstitions
of the people. Now, thus brought by chance to its very base, he looked
up at it with a cold, creepy sensation of shuddering awe. He
contemplated it much as a Liberty, Equality and Fraternity "citizen"
during the thick of the Reign of Terror, may have contemplated the
guillotine, as an institution with which he might any day be called upon
to cultivate a much closer acquaintance.

He looked down at the shattered bones, then up at the cliff. This was
the mode of death then. The victims were taken to the summit of this
latter-day Tarpeian rock and hurled therefrom. But as he looked
something seemed to be flapping softly against the face of the cliff
high overhead. Ropes? _Reims_? Were people then _hanged_ from the
brow--not merely thrown over? Hanging was not a Zulu method of
slaughter. Gerard was more mystified than ever.

And with this mystification came a great and growing curiosity. As he
was here he determined to explore further. He would take advantage of
being alone and unwatched to ascend the rock. A horrible fascination,
which was more than mere curiosity, seemed to beckon him on, and with it
ran an instinctive feeling that the knowledge thus gained might possibly
be of use to him. Acting upon this impulse he rode round to the other
side and began the ascent.

The latter was not difficult. Precipitous only on its front face, the
furthe