men;
and here they halted and lighted their watch fires. The enemy also
halted, about half a mile lower down the pass, and, as soon as it was
dark, sent out a number of scouts with instructions to search for a way
by which the savages might slip past during the night, and get round to
the rear of the Izreelites. Some of those scouts never returned to
their camp; those who did reported that the task assigned to them had
proved an impossible one, for that, after climbing laboriously and at
the risk of their necks for varying distances, they had all, without
exception, arrived at a point where farther progress was impossible and
retreat scarcely less so. Meanwhile, the Izreelite watch fires, the
foremost line of which happened to be at a turn of the pass, just where
they were well within sight of the enemy, were kept brilliantly burning
all through the night, evidencing an untiring vigilance on the part of
the Izreelite outposts, who could be seen, by the light of the fires,
moving about from time to time.

But when at length the first rays of the morning sun smote the topmost
ridges of the hills and came stealing down their sides, arousing the
combatants to another day of sanguinary strife, behold! there were no
Izreelites to be seen in the neighbourhood of the still briskly blazing
fires, nor could the fresh scouts which were promptly sent out find any
trace of them. Then Mokatto, suspecting an ambush, sent forward other
scouts, in relays, with orders to advance up the pass--each relay
keeping the one next before it in sight--until the leading band should
regain touch with the enemy, when a single scout was to return with the
intelligence. But, strange to say, the single scout did not return; and
when at length the fiery chief, losing patience at the absence of all
news, gave orders for a general advance up the pass, the impi who led
the way soon discovered the reason, for they came upon the bodies of
those scouts, one after the other, lying in the narrowing roadway, each
with an arrow through his heart, evidently shot from some spot near at
hand, but quite inaccessible from the roadway itself.

Yet still no enemy was to be seen, no sign of his presence to be
discovered, until Mokatto, leading his contingent and advancing with the
utmost caution, reached the summit of the pass, when he found that the
narrow roadway, at a point where it turned sharply round an elbow, had
been broken down for a distance of some fifty