words,
or part of them.

"Nearly to the bottom! But this place has no bottom."

"Now you forget, father of mystery," I said, knowingly. "It has, for we
have sounded it, with a piece of lead at the end of a line."

He looked amused, shaking his head softly.

"Yet, it is as I say," he answered. "It has no bottom."

Rapidly I gave Miss Sewin the burden of our conversation, and she looked
puzzled. The while, Arlo, crouching a few yards off, was eyeing the
witch doctor strangely, uttering low growls which deepened every time he
made a movement, and still, beneath the sound I could always detect that
same note of fear.

"What is in the water down there, Ukozi?" I said. "Not a crocodile.
What then?"

He was in no hurry to reply. He took snuff.

"Who may tell?" he answered, having completed that important operation.
"Yet, Iqalaqala, are you still inclined--you and Umsindo--to continue
swimming there, and diving nearly to the bottom--ah-ah! nearly to the
bottom?"

He had put his head on one side and was gazing at me with that
expression of good-humoured mockery which a native knows so well how to
assume. I, for my part, was owning to myself that it would take a very
strong motive indeed to induce me to adventure my carcase again within
the alluring depths of that confounded _tagati_ pool, for so it now
seemed. Moreover I knew I should get no definite enlightenment from
him--at any rate that day--so thought I might just as well try him on
the subject of Miss Sewin's loss. But as I was about to put it to him
he began:

"That which you seek is not down there."

"Not down there?" I echoed. "But, what do we seek, father of the
wise?"

"It shines."

The thing was simple. He had found it and planted it somewhere, with a
view to acquiring additional repute, and--incidentally--remuneration.

"I think we shall recover your coin, Miss Sewin," I said.

"Ah. He can find it for us then? If he does I shall become quite a
convert to witch doctorism, for want of a better word."

"You will see. Now, Ukozi. Where is that which we seek?"

"_Au_! It shines--like the sun. To find it something else that shines
will be necessary. Something that shines--like the moon."

I laughed to myself over this "dark" saying, and produced a half-crown--
a new one.

"Here is what shines like the moon at full," I said.

He held out both hands, looked at it for a moment as it lay in the
hollow thus formed, then said: