The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Secret of the Lebombo, by Bertram Mitford

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Title: A Secret of the Lebombo

Author: Bertram Mitford

Release Date: June 20, 2010 [EBook #32916]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SECRET OF THE LEBOMBO ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

A Secret of the Lebombo, by Bertram Mitford.

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A SECRET OF THE LEBOMBO, BY BERTRAM MITFORD.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE SHEEP-STEALERS.

The sun flamed down from a cloudless sky upon the green and gold of the
wide valley, hot and sensuous in the early afternoon. The joyous piping
of sheeny spreeuws mingled with the crowing of cock koorhans concealed
amid the grass, or noisily taking to flight to fuss up half a dozen
others in the process. Mingled, too, with all this, came the swirl of
the red, turgid river, whose high-banked, willow-fringed bed cut a dark
contrasting line through the lighter hue of the prevailing bush. From
his perch a white-necked crow was debating in his mind as to whether a
certain diminutive tortoise crawling among the stones was worth the
trouble of cracking and eating, or not.

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Wyvern moved stealthily forward, step by step, his pulses tingling with
excitement. Then parting some boughs which came in the way he peered
down into the _donga_ which lay beneath. What he saw was not a pleasant
sight, but--it was what he had expected to see.

Two Kafirs were engaged in the congenial, to them, occupation of
butchering a sheep. Not a pleasant sight we have said, but to this man
doubly unpleasant, for this was one of his own sheep--not the first by
several, as he suspected. Well, he had caught the rascals red-handed at
last.

Wyvern stood there cogitating as to his line of action. The Kafirs,
utterly unsuspicious of his presence, went on with their cutting and
quartering, chattering gleefully in their deep-toned voices, as to what
good condition the meat was in, and what a