"The deuce you did."

"Well I did. I've got a rum sort of instinct, Wyvern, and it has saved
more than one man's life before to-day."

"And it has saved one man's life twice to-day, old chap," answered
Wyvern gravely.

"That's nothing as between you and me," rejoined the other. "When I
remember that day on the Hlobane--"

"Oh damn the Hlobane," cut in Wyvern. "Now do you think this unhung
scoundrel has any inkling of our errand?"

"No, but for some reason or other he'd rather have our room than our
company, and the best road towards that is to get rid of us. I had my
eye on him from the very beginning, luckily. I saw him start shoving at
that tree, and the only way to stop you dead short was to invent that
snake-bite lie, just as the only way to make you clear the spring-gun
string was to give you the shove I did. You let it off, but the sudden
pitch forward just cleared the charge."

"Well, if he gets up to anything of that sort openly I shall shoot,"
said Wyvern decisively.

"So shall I," said Fleetwood, with equal decision.

The while the subject of these remarks, having solaced his feelings by
thrashing one of his dependents, and getting considerably drunk, was
arriving at the conclusion that the process of "taking care of" Wyvern
was not going to prove as easy as it looked, and that he himself had
begun upon it very badly indeed.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

THE OPAL.

An amphitheatre of bush and krantzes, the latter fringed on the sides
and brink with the feathery droop of forest trees: dark, lateral kloofs
running steeply up into the face of the heights: beyond the silence of a
great wilderness, but enhanced by the varying bird voices upon the heat
of the still atmosphere, or the hum of insects and the chirrup of
crickets; and, over all, the deep blue arch of an unclouded sky.

Wyvern wiped his wet face with his wet handkerchief and gasped. He
realised that he was getting limp--the enervating limpness produced by
the torrid, up-country, steamy heat, and, proportionately, was getting
depressed. So far they seemed no nearer their goal. They had searched,
always with the greatest caution, but without success, or even a clue;
and Hlabulana, their guide, seemed not nearly so confident now they had
reached the locality as he had seemed when he made his statement to
Fleetwood. In brief he was puzzled but would not own to it--only put
them off in his vague native way. Added to which Joe Fleetwood