s, guarding,
day and night, the approaches to the sacred neighbourhood of the King's
grave.

CHAPTER TEN.

UMZILICAZI'S GRAVE.

The huge granite pile loomed forth overhead, grim, frowning, indistinct.
Then, as the faint streak in the blackness of the eastern horizon
banded into red width, the outlines of the great natural mausoleum stood
forth clearer and clearer.

Blachland's pulses beat hard, as he stood gazing. At last he had
reached the goal of his undertaking--at last he stood upon the forbidden
ground. The uneasy consciousness that discovery meant Death--death,
moreover, in some barbarous and lingering form--was hardly calculated to
still his bounding pulses. He stood there alone. Hlangulu had come as
near as he dared, and, with the minutest instructions as to the nearest
and safest approach, had hidden to await his return.

How they had eluded the vigilance of the pickets our explorer hardly
knew. He called to mind, however, a moment which, if not the most
exciting moment of his life, at any rate brought him within as grim a
handshaking proximity to certain death as he had ever yet attained.
For, at the said moment, Hlangulu had drawn him within a rock cleft--and
that with a quick muscular movement which there was neither time nor
opportunity to resist, but which, a second later, there was no
inclination to, as he beheld--they both beheld--a body of Matabele
warriors, fully armed, and seeming to rise out of nowhere, pass right
over the very spot just occupied by themselves. He could see the
markings of the hide shields, could even make out the whites of rolling
eyeballs in the starlight, as the savages flitted by and were gone.

But would they return? Had the sound of strange footsteps reached their
ears, and started them in search? Assuredly, if Hilary Blachland stood
in need of a new and intense excitement, he had got it now. But a
barely breathed inquiry met for some time with no response from his
guide, who at length rose up and declared that they must push on.

And now here he stood alone. Before him two massive granite faces
arose, leaning forward, as it were, until their overhanging brows nearly
met the topmost boughs of a solitary _Kafferboen_ which grew out of the
ground fronting the entrance at a distance of some yards. Over the
angle formed by these an immense boulder was balanced, in such wise as
to form a huge natural porch; but in continuation of the angle was a
deft, a tall