iously trying to fill me up? Me, mind? No, it can't be."

"Well, the Matabele say there's a big snake mounting guard over
Umzilikazi's remains. It is the King's spirit which has passed into the
snake. That is why the snake comes in such a lot when they go
periodically and give the _sibonga_ at his grave."

"And you believe that?"

"They say so."

"What sort of a snake is it?"

"A black _imamba_. Mind you, I've never seen it."

"Don't you be so cocksure about everything, Blachland," grunted
Pemberton, who was fast dropping asleep. "Luck or no luck, there's
mighty rum things happen you can't explain, nor scare up any sort of
reason for."

"Won't do--no, not for half a minute," returned the other, briskly and
decisively. "You can explain everything; and as for luck, and all that
sort of thing--why, it's only fit for old women, and the lower orders."

Pemberton grunted again, and more sleepily still. His pipe at that
moment fell out of his mouth, and he lurched over, fast asleep.
Sybrandt, too, was nodding, but through his drowsiness he noticed that
the native, a low-class Matabele, Hlangulu by name, was moving about, as
though trying to sidle up near enough to catch some of the conversation.
He was drowsy, however, and soon dropped off.

Blachland, sitting there, felt anything but inclined for sleep. This
new idea had caught on to his mind with a powerful hold. It was full of
risk, and the object to be attained _nil_. The snake story he dismissed
as sheer savage legend, childish and poor even as such. The luck
theory, propounded by Pemberton, smacked of the turnip-fed lore of the
average chaw-bacon in rural England. No, the risk lay in the
picket-guard. That, to his mind, constituted the real peril, and the
only one. It, however, might be avoided; and, the more he thought about
it, the more resolved was Hilary Blachland to penetrate the forbidden
recess, to explore the tomb of the warrior King, and that at any risk.

Strangely wakeful, he lounged there, filling and lighting pipe after
pipe of good Magaliesberg. The stars gleamed forth from the dark vault,
so bright and clear and lamp-like in the glow of night in those high,
subtropical latitudes, that it seemed as though the hand had but to be
stretched forth to grasp them. Away over the veldt, jackals yelped; and
the glimmer of the camp fire, dying low, emboldened the hungry little
beasts to come nearer and nearer, attracted by the fresh meat b