nt on: "You also, Lord Macumazana, work for a reward, the countless
store of ivory which your eyes have beheld lying in the burial place of
elephants beyond the Tava River. When you have slain Jana who watches
the store, and defeated the Black Kendah who serve him, it is yours and
we will give you camels to bear it, or some of it, for all cannot be
carried, to the sea where it can be taken away in ships. As for the
yellow man, I think that he seeks no reward who soon will inherit all
things."

"The old witch-doctor means that I am going to die," remarked Hans
expectorating reflectively. "Well, Baas, I am quite ready, if only Jana
and certain others die first. Indeed I grow too old to fight and travel
as I used to do, and therefore shall be glad to pass to some land where
I become young again."

"Stuff and rubbish!" I exclaimed, then turned and listened to Harut who,
not understanding our Dutch conversation, was speaking once more.

"Lords," he said, "these paths which run east and west are the real
approach to the mountain top and the temple, not that which, as I
suppose, led you through the cave of the old serpent. The road to
the west, which wanders round the base of the hill to a pass in those
distant mountains and thence across the deserts to the north, is so easy
to stop that by it we need fear no attack. With this eastern road the
case is, however, different, as I shall now show you, if you will ride
with me."

Then he gave some orders to two attendant priests who departed at a run
and presently reappeared at the head of a small train of camels which
had been hidden, I know not where. We mounted and, following the road
across a flat piece of ground, found that not more than half a mile away
was another precipitous ridge of rock which had presumably once formed
the lip of an outer crater. This ridge, however, was broken away for a
width of two or three hundred yards, perhaps by some outrush of lava,
the road running through the centre of the gap on which schanzes had
been built here and there for purposes of defence. Looking at these I
saw that they were very old and inefficient and asked when they had been
erected. Harut replied about a century before when the last war took
place with the Black Kendah, who had been finally driven off at this
spot, for then the White Kendah were more numerous than at present.

"So Simba knows this road?" I said.

"Yes, Lord, and Jana knows it also, for he fought in that war a