r feet. A strong and sharp iron head was fixed at
one end, and at the other an eye, to which a string was attached. This
rude shaft was then hung up to the branch of a large tree immediately
over the path by which the hippopotamuses were wont to go down to the
river. The string was passed over the branch, round a projecting root
at the bottom of the tree, and straight across the path, being
ultimately secured to a peg driven into the earth. This string came
into contact with the feet of the hippopotamus, which, in walking,
shambles along, scarcely raising its legs from the ground. The string
being in this manner broken, the heavy beam instantly falls, usually
striking the hippopotamus in the back, and penetrating the vitals. The
blow is almost always mortal. Even if the animal is not killed on the
spot, it is so badly wounded that it dies shortly afterwards.
Sometimes, to make assurance doubly sure, Mr De Walden told them, the
iron is steeped in poison.

"There didn't need that," said Nick, as he contemplated the barbed
point, as big as the fluke of an anchor, and sharp as an arrow. "The
iron head would have finished me off very handsomely, without troubling
the poison-makers. Well, I'll take care another time, as the children
say, and I can't do more. Let's be off now. I want to get to our
quarters for the night."

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

THE BASUTO KRAAL--QUEEN LAURA--THE QUEEN'S NARRATIVE--THE WRECK OF THE
GROSVENOR--SUFFERINGS OF THE SURVIVORS--THE BASUTO CHIEF--DE WALDEN'S
JOY.

Nightfall was near at hand, when the party approached the Basuto kraal;
and the boys looked eagerly round them to see if they could discover any
marked differences between it and the other native villages which they
had visited. Ella, as she had called herself, had hardly spoken a word
during the whole journey. A sudden shyness apparently having seized
her, which was a curious contrast to the self-possession of her
demeanour when she first encountered them. To the questions addressed
to her by Frank and Nick, she made very brief and seemingly reluctant
replies, and they soon discontinued their inquiries. But their
curiosity was only heightened by the lady's unwillingness to satisfy it.
It appeared that De Walden had heard something of a white Basuto Queen;
but whence she came, or how she had attained to her kingdom, was a
sealed mystery. Perhaps she might be one of an English colony, which
had established itself in the