Do you understand ?" "We hear you, husband," they replied, somewhat sullenly, for now they understood that this new wife would be a mistress, and not a sister to them.
"Then be careful that you do not forget my words, and--hearken--so soon as you have cut a full load of hut-poles, let two of you carry them up to the krantz yonder, where they are wanted, but be careful that no one sees you going in or coming out." "We hear you, husband," they said again, whereon Swart Piet turned and rode away.
Now, although Zinti was said to be foolish, chiefly, as I think, because he could not, or would not, work, yet in many ways he was cleverer than most Kaffirs, and especially always did he desire to see new places, the more so if they chanced to be secret places.

Therefore, when he heard Swart Piet command the women to carry the rods for the hidden krantz, he determined that he would follow them, and this he did so skilfully that they neither heard nor saw him.

At first he wondered whither they could be going, for they walked straight to the foot of what seemed to be an unclimbable wall of rock more than a hundred feet high.

On the face of this rock, however, shrubs grew here and there like the bristles on the back of a hog, and having first glanced round to see that no one was watching them, the women climbed to one of these shrubs, which was rooted in the cliff about the height of a man above the level of the ground, and vanished so quickly that Zinti, who as watching, rubbed his eyes in wonder.

After waiting a while, however, he followed in their steps to find that behind the shrub was a narrow cleft or crack such as are often to be seen in cliffs, and that down this cleft ran a pathway which twisted and turned in the rock, growing broader as it went, till at last it ended in the hidden krantz.