Poeskop was instantly on the alert. Creeping, with the silence and adroitness of a serpent, in the direction of the cliff edge, he presently peeped through the bushes, and beheld his arch-enemy Karl Engelbrecht, lying prone on the lip of the precipice, evidently watching very intently some one on the ladder. For a moment the Bushman was uncertain what to do. Then it dawned upon him, from the movements of Engelbrecht, that the person beneath was descending and not climbing the ladder. He decided to wait for the Boer's next move, which, indeed, was not long in coming.
Engelbrecht softly rose, gripped the ladder fairly, and began to descend. His great frame disappeared over the cliff edge. Then a wonderful smile, a smile of triumphant hatred, swept over Poeskop's face. He knew now that at last his hated enemy was delivered into his hands. He waited till the big Boer was a third of the way down the precipice, and then, swiftly creeping to the edge, looked over. Karl Engelbrecht was going steadily down, hand under hand. He was not accustomed to a task like this; but he had nerves of steel and a good head, and he was getting used to the dizzy height and the sway of the ladder. Suddenly an exclamation from the cliff above him made him look up. What he saw struck, for the first time in his life, a freezing terror at his heart. He saw above him, leering at him with fiendish glee and malevolence, the face of Poeskop, the Bushman.
"So," cried Poeskop in Dutch, "I have you at last! At last, Karl Engelbrecht! I have waited a long time, but now I am even with you, _edele heer_ [noble sir]," he added, with jeering sarcasm. "You won't like the fall, but you've got to face it, and you'll strike plaguy hard at the bottom. At last, Karl, the devil has thee! The devil has thee!"
Death, indeed, stared the Boer in the face. He knew he was doomed; he knew that nothing in this world would turn the fell purpose of the man above him. But, brute as he was, Engelbrecht was no coward, and, setting his teeth, he made one despairing attempt to snatch salvation. His rifle hung at his back. Clinging to the rope-ladder with one hand, he disengaged the weapon with marvellous dexterity, swinging as he was over that frightful abyss, and, pointing it upward, tried to align it on the Bushman. Next instant he pulled trigger, the bullet whizzed far upward into space, and the report of the rifle rattled with deafening reverberation around the cliffs.