d. I let the enemy pass in pursuit of Muata, as
arranged, but when it came to our part in the plan--that of closing
the defile--we found the job tougher than we anticipated. Those
cannibals are hard fighters. They fell back as we unmasked our
ambush; but they rallied quickly, and delivered one assault upon
another. I tell you, we were at our last gasp when your arrival
decided the matter."

"You must have come to close quarters?"

Mr. Hume nodded his head. "I received the blow on the wrist guarding
my head from a club, and the cut on the head from a spear."

"And you used your knife?"

"I dare say I did my share," said the Hunter, who had held the
defile alone at one time, his staunchest supporter, the Angoni Zulu,
having fallen back exhausted.

For a trying spell his undaunted spirit had stood between the valley
and destruction, and the wild men went back to Hassan with a tale of
a terrible white man who had struck down their bravest with a great
blade.

"That Ghoorka knife," he said, "is a great weapon;" and with that
summing-up of the struggle in the gloom of the defile he lit his
pipe, and sat down to gaze upon the valley, so peaceful in
appearance, so charged with the everlasting tragedy of life. "If
those people were whites, or Arabs, they would now be following up
the enemy to crush him while he is disorganized. But being blacks,
they don't look further ahead than their noses, which were made
short for the purpose."

"Let us go down and offer to lead an expedition in pursuit," said
Compton.

"I guess not, Dick. They'd leave us to do all the fighting
ourselves; and there's no sense in that. What we have to think about
is how to get away."

"Surely there is no difficulty about that. We will go when it suits
us."

"I'm not so sure," said Mr. Hume, gravely.

"But Muata is our friend."

"Muata cannot do what he likes, and, if he could, you've got to
remember this--that Muata in the Okapi, dependent on us, is another
person to Muata the chief in his own kraal."

"I don't think he would be treacherous," said Venning.

"He need not go so far as that to upset our plans. Maybe he would
find it convenient to keep us here as his 'white men' until it suits
him to let us go. You see, he has got to think of himself as chief
and of his people first."

"I don't think he would treat us unfairly," said Compton, warmly,
"especially as they owe so much to us."

"That's nothing."

"But, sir, these people wer