low on
this spoor which we had struck, and we would find her. Heaven knew how,
but still! we would find her. She might have met with an accident and
be sorely in need of help, but--still we would find her, and this--even
this--after the blank, awful realisation of her loss, akin, as it was,
to the disappearance of Hensley--contained relative comfort.

The others were watching me with mingled anxiety and curiosity as, bent
low over the ground, I followed these faint indications. The latter
were tolerably perceptible now to a practised eye, though to no other,
and I kept upon them steadily. Then a ghastly fear smote me again upon
the heart. The spoor was leading straight for the waterhole.

What did it mean? She would not have gone there--voluntarily. After
the spectacle we had witnessed that night nothing on earth would have
induced her to revisit the uncanny place alone, even by daylight. Yet
the dreadful thought had already forced itself upon my mind, that there,
if anywhere, would the mystery be solved.

In silence, eager, intensified, we pursued our way; for the others would
not speak lest they should distract my mind from its concentration.
Thus we came out upon the waterhole.

The spoor had led us straight to the high brow of cliff overhanging the
pool--the spot upon which we had all stood that afternoon when we had
first seen the mysterious monster which had disturbed the water. And--
what was this?

All the soil here, where it was not solid rock, had been swept with
branches. There was the pattern in the dust, even if stray leaves and
twigs scattered about had not gone towards showing that, beyond a doubt.
The object was manifest--to efface all traces of a struggle.

Heavens! my brain seemed to be turning to mud with the drear despair of
each fresh discovery. The witch doctor's promise to show the old man
the mystery of the waterhole came back to my mind. I put together the
words of _sibongo_ to the snake I had heard him chanting. Ukozi had
been preparing a way towards a sacrifice to his demon. He had
accustomed the great python to seizing its victim as he brought it--and
he had always brought it, so small, so insufficient, in the shape of the
kid we had seen him give it, as to excite the appetite of the monster
rather than to gratify it. He had been practising on Major Sewin's
curiosity, so that when the time should be ripe he would bring him to
the edge of the pool, where all unsuspecting h