Now they stood before a hill, measuring, perhaps, three thousand paces
round its base. It was of no great height, and yet unclimbable, for,
after a man had gone up a little way, the sides of it were sheer,
offering no foothold except to the rock-rabbits and the lizards. No
one was to be seen without this hill, nor in the great kraal of the
Halakazi that lay to the east of it, and yet the ground about was
trampled with the hoofs of oxen and the feet of men, and from within
the mountain came a sound of lowing cattle.
"Here is the nest of Halakazi," quoth Galazi the Wolf.
"Here is the nest indeed," said Umslopogaas; "but how shall we come at
the eggs to suck them? There are no branches on this tree."
"But there is a hole in the trunk," answered the Wolf.
Now he led them a little way till they came to a place where the soil
was trampled as it is at the entrance to a cattle kraal, and they saw
that there was a low cave which led into the cliff, like an archway
such as you white men build. but this archway was filled up with great
blocks of stone placed upon each other in such a fashion that it could
not be forced from without. After the cattle were driven in it had
been filled up.
"We cannot enter here," said Galazi. "Follow me."
So they followed him, and came to the north side of the mountain, and
there, two spear-casts away, a soldier was standing.
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