WHAT PASSED IN THE HUT Going on to her hands and knees Sihamba crawled towards the hut.

Now she was within ten paces of it and could see that a man stood on guard at its doorway.

"I must creep round to the back," she thought, and began to do so, heading for some shrubs which grew to the right.

Already she had almost reached them, when of a sudden, and for an instant only, the moon shone out between two thick clouds, revealing her, though indistinctly, to the eyes of the guard.

Now Sihamba was wearing a fur cape made of wild dog's hide, and, crouched as she was upon her hands and knees, half-hidden, moreover, by a tuft of dry grass, the man took her to be a wild dog or a jackal, and the hair which stood out round her head for the ruff upon the animal's neck.
"Take that, you four-legged night thief," he said aloud, and hurled the assegai in his hand straight at her.