th
but some of them awful rifts, into which should a man fall, he would he
entombed by that lonely mountain height until the crack of doom. But
this man had no intention of undergoing any such fate. He knew his
ground well, and, knowing it well, moved with especial care.

All of a sudden he was conscious of a quick tingling of the blood, but
he had sufficient control neither to stop nor look round. He only
_listened_; listened with an acute, almost painful intensity. He had
seen nobody, had heard nothing, yet that strange sixth sense of
realisation had told him that he was no longer alone on the mountain
top.

For a moment a quiver or qualm of superstition shook even his mind.
What consideration on earth could have brought any being other than
himself--any _human_ being--up here to-night? Yet even the misgiving of
superstition was a relief. The thing to be feared was the presence of
such human being.

He whirled round quickly and suddenly. Just as he had thought. In the
flash, lighting up the whole plateau, something dropped; disappeared
behind a flat boulder not fifty yards away, and in that flash the man on
the mountain top realised that he had to do with a human being. In
which case every instinct of self-preservation cried out loudly that the
other must not leave the mountain top alive.

There was something cat-like in his movement as with incredible speed
and agility he made straight for the spot. Something sang past his
head. It was not the breeze--now sweeping the tableland in fitful
puffs. It was something which he heard strike the stones behind him
with a steely ring. Then he had grappled with the figure behind the
rock.

It rose, to fully his own height. Something else that was steely
gleamed in his eyes--a broad, formidable blade. But the wrist of its
wielder was grasped with a grip as of iron.

The huge white mountainous cloud, lit up by un-intermittent lightning
flashes, now illuminated this life and death struggle with weird,
lamp-like effect. For it was a life and death struggle. The white man
could not, by every known law of self-preservation, let any witness get
away from this place a _living_ witness. The dark man, by the same
intuition realised that fact, and such being the case realised also that
he was in the position of a "cornered" animal. He must fight--hard and
desperately--for his life. And he came of a race of hard and desperate
fighters.

Neither spoke. Both wer