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Title: The Marbled Catskin
Author: Gibbons, Charles Harrison (1869-1931)
Date of first publication: 1928
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Stanley Paul & Co. (1928), Ltd., 1928
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 2 November 2015
Date last updated: 2 November 2015
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1280

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.

In Chapter I, we have corrected an apparently incorrect Latin
quotation.  The printed edition gives "Fata volentum ducunt."
We have emended this to "Fata volentem ducunt."






  _The
  Marbled Catskin_

  _by_
  CHARLES HARRISON GIBBONS

  _Author of
  "A Sourdough Samaritan," "Sixty Black Sheep,"
  "The Well in the Desert," etc., etc._



  LONDON
  STANLEY PAUL & CO. (1928), LTD.




  _First published in_ 1928



  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
  AT THE ANCHOR PRESS, TIPTREE, ESSEX




  To
  W. ST. GEORGE ASHE
  FORMER DEPUTY COMMANDANT, S.A.C.
  ADVENTURING SOLDIER OF FORTUNE AND
  GALLANT GENTLEMAN!




  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  PROLOGUE--THE PROFESSOR HAS THE FLOOR

  I. FATE TAKES THE LEAD REIN
  II. MYSTERIES MULTIPLY
  III. LOVE'S DAWN AND THE ANCIENT WAY
  IV. THE MAGIC STONE AND MEISJE
  V. STORMCLOUDS GATHER
  VI. WHITE MAGNET-STONE
  VII. MESSAGES FROM THE PAST
  VIII. THE PRISONER-PRINCESS
  IX. THE JUSTICE OF THE GODS
  X. THE SACRAMENT OF THE SERPENT
  XI. AN UNSEEN SWORD FALLS
  XII. DOWN TO THE DEPTHS

  POSTSCRIPTS:
      ONE
      TWO
      THREE




PROLOGUE


THE PROFESSOR HAS THE FLOOR

"It was that misbegotten black cat streaking across in front of
me--just missed him by inches.  Otherwise"--Bradley grinned rather
sheepishly--"otherwise I'd have trimmed the Professor here five-up or
better," he concluded lamely....  "I'd like to skin that cat."

The half-dozen of them, settled cosily in the club lounge, highballs
within easy reach, laughed in chorus, the Professor alone excepted.

"One alibi's as good as another," chortled Travers.  "A new one's an
inspiration.  The cat's new to me."

"'Now what was that?  It was the Cat,'" Brown hummed the ancient ditty
from an almost forgotten comic opera, until a well-aimed cushion
silenced him.  The inseparables applauded.

"I wouldn't take the match if I didn't know he was spoofing," declared
the Professor, oblivious of interruption.  He was "the Professor"
always, outside his beloved Museum, where he was officially "the
Curator."

"I don't like cats," he added reflectively to the room at large.  "I
hate 'em--always have....  Funny things, cats.  One either takes to
them violently, all sorts, and wants to be forever petting and fondling
'em, or else the whole breed's poison to one....  Cats!"  He shrugged
eloquent distaste.

The rest of the bunch laughed anew.

"What's poor puss ever done to you?" came from the depths of a big
chair from behind which Macrae's bald head rose like the harvest moon
with a bushfire smoke halo.  "I thought the cat was a sort of sacred
beastie?  Egyptian or Abyssinian, what?"

The Professor said nothing, pulling at his blackened briar and staring
at the glowing log in the wide fireplace.  His abstractions were
notorious.  Brown gave him a poke.

"Wake up, old top!  You're forgetting the victor's mead," as he passed
a brimming glass.  "What you mooning over now?"

"Cats, blast 'em!"  The Professor came to life.  "As a scientific man I
should know better, but sometimes I believe they're all the bad luck
folks say."  He studied the fire, again silently retrospective.  They
watched him till the effervescent Brown could keep still no longer.

"Come on, Professor!  Something's on your conscience--confess!"

The Professor hitched round his chair to peer at them through his
thick-lensed glasses.

"I was thinking," said he, "of a devilish odd tale I heard a while ago.
There was a cat in it--the skin of a cat at least..."

He halted, but they were drawing in their chairs encouragingly.  The
Professor had some rare stories when he was moved to talk.  They were
in the mood.

"Now then, come through!"  Bradley spoke for all.  "We demand that
story.  If anybody else has been getting jinxed by a cat I don't mind
taking him on.  We'd be even on handicap."

The Professor ignored him.

"H'm!  That _was_ a creepy thing," he mused.  "Poor chap! ...
Fourteenth of September it was.  I'm not likely to forget that date.
It was the night after Darby came in with that fine collection of
lepidoptera, diptera, and geometers.  Had a butterfly he insisted was
_Argynnis_.  I pointed out to him it couldn't very well be.  The
habitat of _Argynnis_, as everyone knows, is Asian and infrequently
South African--never these parts.  Darby was obstinate.  You know how
pig-headed some of these chaps get, particularly when they run across a
specimen that's likely to get them the spotlight.  I was patient with
him, and polite.  Referred him to Holland and to Howard, and to
Comstock, of course.  Got the books in and let him see for himself he
must be wrong.  And yet, would you believe it, he insisted.  Even
suggested that Comstock--Comstock, mind you--was sometimes a bit of an
ass!  That _was_ going too far, as I told him.  'Comstock,' I said,
'cannot be wrong.  _Ergo_: when you say this is _Argynnis_, why, of
course--don't you see----'  Eh?  What's that, Bradley?  Oh yes, to be
sure--that story.

"It was after my little run-in with old Darby.  He actually went off in
a huff, calling Comstock a faker!  I'd sent the books back and was
lighting my pipe.  Thought I might take another look at his
_Silverspot_--not that he could by any chance be right--when the door
opened without so much as a by-your-leave, and this chap blew in.
Tallish he was, and grey and haggard and shaky-like.  Must have been a
husky in his day.  Distinctly rugged type, emphatically Nordic.  Not
that I'd take him for old--more like burned out.  He limped in and
lurched into a chair.  Never took off his wreck of a hat. 'Pon my word,
I was flabbergasted, and when I caught his eye it was dull as a fish's.
Then a spark came into it and lighted up that dead-ash face.  There was
a touch of the cavalier in the way he swept off his old hat and stood
up.

"'I beg your pardon,' said he--and he spoke like a gentleman--'I'm a
bit knocked up; forgetting all my manners.  Excuse my barging in this
way....  I'm on my last legs and I thought perhaps ... well, this musty
old Museum of yours might like to get a little thing I have here....
No, I--I haven't had a drink to-day!'

"It seemed to jerk itself out of him while he fished about in his
pocket and brought out an odd-shaped scrap of pelt.  Beautifully
dressed it was, and curiously marked, not mottled--marbled.  He shoved
it across to me, and I could see his nerves were all shot, the way his
hand trembled.  I reached to pick it up--I'd never seen anything quite
of the sort before and anything new like that naturally intrigues
one--when he snatched it up and jammed it back in his pocket with a
look as though he meant to fight for it.  I thought he must be a bit
dotty.  He guessed the thought, too, for he seemed to crumple up and
the fire died out of his eyes.

"'Sorry,' he mumbled.  'Think I'm a trifle touched, eh?' and he
chuckled....  Can you call something a chuckle that chills you through
with its suggestions of torture---despair?  It was uncanny, anyway.  To
quiet him I sat down again.  I'd jumped up, you see, grabbing a heavy
ruler.  He saw it in my hand and he actually grinned.  But there wasn't
any fun in his grin, either, no more than a skull's.

"'Told you I was a bit wobbly,' he grunted.  'But I'm not homicidal,
really, as a general thing.'  There was nothing I could say.  I just
waited.  There was something about him--I don't know just how to put
it....  He took that catskin thing from his pocket again and laid it
down on the desk.  This time he didn't offer to snatch it back.  I
hesitated about touching it, though, till he laughed that damn laugh
again.

"'Take a look at it--certainly,' he sneered.  'I beg to assure you it
won't bite and it isn't poison----'

"He caught himself up sharp.

"'But what is it?' I asked.

"Once more he let out that ghastly chuckle.  I could see he was about
due for a smash.  I'd a bottle of rather good stuff tucked away behind
my Hornaday (that's right, Brad--laugh), and I grabbed it and poured
him a stiff spot.  He reached for it, and his hand shook so he'd have
spilled it all if I hadn't held him off.  And then, what do you think?
He stiffened like an old soldier and held it straight out in front of
him in a fist that didn't show a tremor.

"'_Amor et melle et felle est fecundissimus_,'[1] said he, very softly,
right out of old Plautus!  I told you he was a gentleman.  Then he
downed the spot and I poured him another, and he gulped that too.  They
seemed to pull him together and--damn it, I felt sorry for him....
Fine sort he must have been, before things began to happen.  He sat
hunched up, staring at me with those dead eyes of his, weighing what
he'd say, I imagine, and every second or so he'd glance at that catskin
thing on the desk and then force his eyes away from it.  I picked it up
and passed it over to him and he pouched it quick as scat....  What was
it?  Why, _Felis Marmorata_--thought I'd said so?  Oh, it's uncommon
enough to be interesting, I assure you, the Marbled Cat!  Habitat's
very restricted: South-eastern Himalayas, Upper Burmah, Siam and Assam.
They claim to have got one or two in the Federated Malay States, but
it's extremely rare--much more so than the Clouded Leopard.  It's a bit
larger than the common house cat.  'Habits unknown,' Lydekker says.


[1] "Love is rich both in honey and in gall."


"I'd promised to be home early, but I clean forgot.  This fellow
somehow fascinated me.  I'm a curious, impressionable old stick, as you
fellows know.  Anyway, I didn't want to let go of him.  I lied, of
course, when I told him I was booked for a lonely dinner unless he'd
join me.  He balked at first, but I finally got him to toddle over to
the club with me.  It was there, after dinner, he opened up.  A shivery
sort of tale it was!  We had the place all to ourselves long before
he'd finished....  It came out by jerks and rushes, with long silences
in between.  I had to keep prodding him....  And it hadn't any
beginning, either, the way he told it.  I wrote some letters later and
managed to fill in the breaks.  That made it a lot clearer, but no less
horrible.  You see, when I did get him started, he just naturally
back-trailed through the years that had sapped him, and the genesis of
it all was missing.  That was before he'd come into it....  I often
wonder what became of him--poor, poor devil! ... I'd best put the thing
in some sort of order.  It will make it simpler; and I've always been
strong for chronological sequence."

The Professor paused, his hands exploring his many pockets.  All bulged
with old letters, clippings, memoranda.  He was something of a
perambulating filing cabinet, minus the system.  Scrutinising the pack
retrieved, he searched for the letter he wanted.

"Better shuffle 'em before you deal," Brown suggested.

"Ah, here it is!"  The Professor selected a bulky missive, clumsily
folded.  "From Merriman," he explained--"Merriman of the Rhodesian
Anthropological Research Commission.  Sound chap, very, but a bit
verbose, when he's not pedantic.  Always grubbing about back-country,
out-of-the-way places.  Been doing it years and years....  I couldn't
get the yarn this odd bird had spun me out of my head.  There were
breaks in it, as I've told you--missing links--hiatuses.  I kept
puzzling over the tale, getting nowhere.  Had to have more data.  Then
I happened to think of Merriman.  'If anyone's got any inside
information on things that have happened in that God-forsaken
wilderness in the dead and gone years, it'll be that nosy old fossil
Merriman,' I said to myself.  So I made an excuse for
writing--congratulated him on one of his prosy papers I'd been skimming
through in the last Report of the B.A.A.S., and then casually asked if
he'd ever run across an old codger named Gentil down in that Sankaeli
country, and, if he had, what he could tell me about him, and so forth
and so on.  You see, the story seemed to hinge in a way on a mysterious
sort of party of that name.  Merriman's so annoyingly thorough, I felt
pretty sure if he knew anything I'd have it from A to Z, cross-indexed
and authorities noted.  He's that sort.  And I wasn't wrong, either.
You'd think he'd ground out one of his prolix reports.  This was
different, though, very.  We used to call his usuals 'Merriman's
Insomnia Specifics.'  Here's what he says--no, you read it, Brown.
It'll keep you out of mischief."

He paused to smooth out three or four crumpled sheets criss-crossed
with crabbed handwriting and passed them over.

The letter bore a date of months before, from no place to be found in
the Postal Guide.  "Rhodesia" is a pretty large order, but the
conscientious Merriman had added with habitual meticulousness:
"Approximately 137 mis. E. of Broken Hill."

"Sounds like a good ways back of Beyond," commented light-hearted
Brown.  "Then there's a file number (there would be, of course)--K2164.
And over here to the west edge of the page he's got '_Re Gentil_.' ...
Well, here goes:


"_My Dear Friend and Esteemed Colleague,_

"_It was indeed most kindly and thoughtful of you, in the midst of your
own important work, to notice and so appreciatively write of my
poor----_"


"You can skip all that first part," the Professor interrupted, "down to
about the third paragraph.  'Irrelevant and immaterial,' as the Judge
would say.  Begin where he starts in about Sankaeliland."

Brown dutifully obeyed.


"_Sankaeliland_," he read--"I may ball up the pronunciation of some of
these outlandish names, but you chaps won't know the
dif.--_Sankaeliland is a particularly mountainous but well watered and
fertile area in the Northern Transvaal, of approximately ten thousand
square miles.  Its domestic affairs are tranquil at present writing,
but this fortunate condition has by no means long obtained.  The
titular headman or king gives his name to the country, old Sankaeli
being pretty generally recognized as a powerful chief who has never
been rightly conquered.  The Boers tried to read the Riot Act to him
and he sent them scooting back home as fast as they came after him.
Our people since then have had to discipline him rather sharply on one
or two occasions when his people have got out of hand, but these
punitive expeditions never have been finished jobs._

"_Sankaeli and his outfit (they're an upstanding, hard-scrapping lot)
have the habit when they are really hard pressed, of running to earth
like the wise old fox their chief is, holing up in vast secret caves,
of which there seem to be no end in their mountains.  I've often wanted
to investigate them.  Who knows but what--but I digress.  This they did
in 1878, or perhaps it was '79 (I have no reference works at command
here), when Sir Garnet Wolsey blew in the mouths of such caves as he
could locate.  Of course they must have intercommunicating tunnels or
passages.  In any case, Wolsey failed to deal a decisive blow.  The
Sankaelis just lay low till his patience gave out.  He could blow up
their front doors, but they didn't have to come out at the back till
they got good and ready, and that wasn't until the column had
trekked_.[2] _The old chief musters, so I have been informed, some
twenty or thirty thousand first-chop fighting men._


[2] Marched.


"_Some time after the demonstration in force hereinbefore referred to,
a white man of middle age (person marginally noted) appeared one
evening at Sankaeli's kraal_,[3] _seeking an interview with the Chief.
No one seems to have any information as to where he had journeyed from,
or how.  He was travel-worn and of the Thinker rather than the Worker
type.  Had a very indifferent and meagre outfit--just a couple of
pack-donkeys and a fleabitten skeleton of a country nag for the woman
with him._


[3] Village.


"_She was a washed-out, bedraggled sort, possibly a few years his
junior (full white), and there was a female child, a baby in arms
almost.  The man gave his name as Gentil, and in his palaver with old
Sankaeli said he wanted to settle down in his (the Chief's) country,
live in peace at the foot of the mountains, till the soil, raise a few
cattle, etc.  He evidently wasn't English, and he just as evidently
wasn't Boer.  Those were two points in his favour with the old
scalliwag of a king.  He likely guessed as much, and to follow up the
advantage, if it was one, he was shrewd enough to hint that he hadn't
any love for either of them and might be a useful friend--teach
Sankaeli's people some of the big magic of the whites who had chased
them to the sanctuary of the caves with their great guns, and so forth.
The king scowled a bit at that.  His recollections of his late visitors
weren't any too pleasant, as you may imagine.  But he saw the point of
that argument too.  The old boy is nobody's fool._

"_Ordinarily I haven't a doubt he would have ordered the white
strangers to the torture of the stake.  I suppose you, in your
civilized environment, have an idea such pleasant little proceedings
are quite obsolete?  Here, in Africa, we know better.  A stake, pointed
and hardened by fire, is planted firmly in the ground.  On this the
victim, trussed as for cock-fighting, is impaled in a sitting posture.
Then the native brats play ring-a-rosy around it and him, poor wretch,
and occasionally give him a spin by shoving at his feet.  Nice, playful
folks!  You can keep the sport going quite a time, too, provided the
stake has not been made too sharp._

"_However, the political balance of power was in something of a flux
just then--what with British, Boer, and Zulu bickerings and one thing
and another--and old Sankaeli evidently concluded it behoved him to
play his cards close to the chest till he saw how the game was going.
He hadn't the least desire to see any white man plant himself down in
his territory.  But he didn't quite know what he might be letting
himself in for if he got bumptious.  Naturally he played 'possum.
Might have heard about King Solomon somehow--missionaries are a pesky
nuisance, poking about everywhere--and thought he'd go old Wise Head
one better?  Anyway, this is what came off:_

"'_White man, I have no quarrel with you or your people,' said he.  'I
want none.  Have I not but lately had a peace_ indaba[4] _with the
white_ inkosikaas[5] _whose kraal is beyond the great waters?
Therefore ye shall dwell here in my land.  I will give you slaves to
build your huts, women to till your fields and boys to tend your
cattle.  For great is my love for your people and your Chieftainess
beyond the black sea.'  This was a pretty shrewd stroke, as he thought,
no doubt, in case the stranger should be an Englander after all.  'You
shall dwell in my shadow and have peace.  And I ask of you but one
thing--make only one condition----_'


[4] Council or durbar.

[5] Chieftainess or queen.  A native king would have many wives but
only one inkosikaas or consort.


"'_And that is?_' _the white man asked_.

"'_It is that when this small child be grown'--the Chief pointed a
gnarled black finger at the golden-haired girl baby, chuckling happily
at her play by the mother's feet--'she shall come to me then, for the
house of my women!_'

"_For just one little instant it looked as though the brooding
mountains might have another ghastly deed to whisper over in the night
silences.  The white man drew himself up, his eyes blazing.  Sankaeli
clapped his hands and his guards came on the run.  Then all the spirit
seemed to seep out of the stranger.  The fire died as suddenly as it
had flared up....  He was a weak man._

"_No doubt he had his own pretty urgent reasons for wanting to hide
himself out, away from the world of his kind.  One may safely assume
that much.  Also, he probably reflected, it would be long years before
the child grew to womanhood.  Much might happen meanwhile.  The Chief
was no longer young.  So he smirked and pondered.  Although he spoke
the native lingo--fluently, too--it was plain the woman knew no word of
it.  While they made palaver she was listlessly patching some small
childish garment._

"_So it came about, much to the foxy Chief's amazement (consternation,
perhaps, would be the better word), this Gentil gave his promise._

"'_It shall be even as you say, great King,_' he agreed.  '_The girl,
as thou seest, is but a tiny bud.  When she flowers in womanhood she
shall go to the house of the King's women._'

"_And that was how Gentil came to have his farm in Sankaeliland and
lived for years under the protection of old Sankaeli.  I haven't the
remotest idea what eventually became of him.  Have heard he is no
longer there and that his woman didn't last long, after which the man
went native; but I've not been up in that country myself for a long
time now, and therefore have no personal information on the subject.
If there is anything more I can do for you in the premises, be sure and
command me._"


"And that's that," remarked the Professor as Brown handed back the
letter.  "One thing I'll have to mention at the outset: this odd egg
I'm telling you about, while we were fussing over whether he would or
would not dine with me, came out flat-footed with a reason that would
only have suggested itself to a gentleman for passing up a square meal
he certainly needed.

"'You don't know me,' he said, 'and you don't know a thing about me.
You'll cancel that invitation, and quite properly, when I tell you I'm
a jailbird.  Only got out of clink six months or so ago.'

"I can't say I was much surprised.  And, not being shocked, as I
suppose I should have been, I couldn't look the part.  He was watching
me pretty closely.  I told him I was sure it hadn't been anything
serious or some such platitude.  And he shot right back:

"'Oh no, merely manslaughter!'

"I'm not squeamish.  There's a lot of this 'sanctity of human life'
stuff strikes me as considerable tosh.  Lots of things men--women too
for that matter--do worse than getting rid of human vermin.

"'As long as men are red-blooded and women are women, things are bound
to happen sometimes,' I assured him, chancing a long shot.

"'Nothing of that sort,' he answered, quite matter-of-factly.  'I shot
an unarmed prisoner--drilled him through the heart, when he was all in
and due to drop with hunger and fatigue--Chinaman I'd never laid eyes
on before.'

"He wasn't one that would alibi, you see.  But that did make it a bit
different, man-killing being man-killing.  Still, I couldn't pump up
the proper horror.  Felt pretty sure there was something back of it all
that somehow would explain things.  So I merely remarked, casually as I
could, that we'd a Chinese cook and a laundryman I'd often felt like
manslaughtering.  And I asked him again as to dinner.  He accepted
then.  Seemed perked up a little.

"I don't know when I've more enjoyed table talk.  He was cultured, a
gentleman.  And he'd travelled a lot, with his eyes open.  We kept the
conversation general; personal questions never once intruded.  He knew
his natural history and quite a bit of anthropology, first hand and
intimately.  Good listener he was, too.  It wasn't till we'd gone into
the smoke-room that I got on the trail of his story.  I'd rung for
cigars.  Naturally the Chinaboy answered.  And, of course, our minds
leaped together to the same thing.  Couldn't help it.  I looked away at
once, but not quite quickly enough.

"'Quite all right,' said he, guessing pretty close.  'There's Chinese
and Chinese, no doubt--Chinamen and Chinese devils.  No nation's a
monopoly on either vice or virtue.  Out in South Africa we got the very
worst of the Chinese breed.  Sheer fiends they were--the vilest, most
heartless, brutish scum of the earth....  No, I'm making no special
plea.  He got off easy....  Know anything about the coolies they
brought in to work our South African mines?'

"I nodded negatively.

"'Not many do, outside Africa,' he went on.  'And we know too much.
Nobody could tell 'em over in England.  They wouldn't listen, and they
wouldn't understand if they did.  Too many inhibitions of starched
civilization.  Now you--you've seen a bit of the underneath of
things--you might....  You see, these beasts they shipped in for mine
labour weren't run-o'-the-mill workpeople at all.  Mostly Boxer
convicts they were, dregs of the Chinese prisons.  Heads of a lot of
them still hitched to their bodies not because they deserved to live
but because some crooked mandarin didn't give a damn about society's
rights if he could market the sweepings of his jails and pocket a bit
of cash....  God!  Some of them that they sent in to Jo'burg!

"'No doubt most of 'em had been in more than one cold-blooded killing.
When they'd get in trouble at the mines we'd generally find out they'd
been up to murders galore back in China.  They were kept in the
compounds, or supposed to be.  Wasn't much of a trick for them to get
out.  And unless we'd the luck to nip 'em outside, we'd precious little
chance to find out what Chinks were absent from the mine any particular
day.  All looked alike to the mine bosses.  You know how Chinese are?

"'And couldn't those devils cover ground when they got out!  One of our
chaps brought in a gang of thirty.  Rounded 'em up forty miles from the
nearest mine.  How did he bring them in?  Oh, tied 'em to a trek chain
and rode herd on them with his rifle ready.  We've caught them hundreds
of miles from the mines, one away up in Pietersburg district and
another in Sekukuniland.  Never could quite make out how those two got
so far without some of the natives spotting 'em.  Hated 'em worse than
sin, did the natives--and scared stiff of 'em, naturally.  Let a native
runner run across a coolie and he'd streak it for dear life to the
nearest police post.  Or, if he hadn't been seen and could keep cover,
he'd pot him and plant him, all neatly and quietly--much the better
plan, though we couldn't say so.

"'All about the Rand, for great distances, too, there were farmsteads
set in young fir plantations.  Raiding parties of these Chinese
cut-throats had these pretty well placed.  They travelled in gangs of
ten or a dozen usually, hiding up by day in these young firs.  When
they'd start out on their hellery as a rule they'd travel a couple of
nights, make, say, forty or fifty miles.  Then they'd swoop down on
some lonely farm, bash in the doors and windows with their jumpers----
A jumper?  Why, it's just a short length of steel rod.  They'd smash in
and terrorize everybody till they found out where the money was.  Young
or old, man or woman, it was all the same.

"'Women probably fared worst when they popped on a place.  They could
make 'em talk quicker when they got their inquisition machinery going.
One woman, I remember, stood pat.  She wouldn't tell where their little
nest-egg was.  They hacked off her breasts.  If rings were too tight to
be slipped off fingers, why, the fingers had to go.  Dozens of farmers'
wives and daughters out Jameson way are going through life short on
fingers....  And of course some folks died.  They got short shrift if
they showed resistance.

"'There was one time, though, they slipped up--farmer named Beer.
Young firs all round his place, of course--just the cover the coolies
wanted.  Beer must have had some notion he was due for a
visit--out-of-the-way place he had.  Night after night he sat out on
his stoep[6] with a gun on his lap--listening--watching--waiting.
Nobody bothered him.  He commenced to crack.  Thought he'd take a
chance on a night's sleep.  So he went to bed.  But he took the old
shot-gun along--kept it right by his side, loaded to the muzzle with
looper, and cocked, though his wife gave him what-for for that.  Women
are a bit dotty at times.  She should have had more sense.  Beer told
me afterwards if the gun hadn't been ready cocked it would have been
lilies for him and her.


[6] Porch or Verandah.


"'Along about two in the morning his dog yelped just once.  Half a
second later the window and the door crashed in.  He must have grabbed
his gun and blazed away before he was really awake.  Good thing, too.
He let fly again as a bluish shape rushed him, and that coolie dropped
with a hole in him you could run your arm through.  Looper's about four
times the size of buckshot and he wasn't six feet away.  For an hour or
so he kept firing from his door at every shadow that moved, till a
sharp-eared policeman rode up.  He'd heard the firing miles away....
No, they didn't quite catch Beer napping, but it was touch and go.
Most of them didn't have his luck.

"'When our fellows did get word of a raid--oh yes, I was in the Police
then--it was generally too late.  Our Kaffir runners weren't to blame,
either.  They did their best, but the Chinese didn't sit down and wait
for us.  They'd cover a lot of ground, fast, too, in their forced
marches.  By the time we were on the job they'd be back at the mines,
mixed up with all the rest.  What could we do?  It was a time of black
terror for those poor farm folk.  The men used to spend their evenings
sitting on their stoeps, rifles across their knees.  Lots of our chaps
have been greeted with bullets when they rode in to see if everything
was O.K.  An overstrained man doesn't stop to think that Chinese don't
come horseback.

"'Our fellows were pretty well worn out, too, with two men out of three
on patrol each night, ranging, circling, listening over their huge
patrol areas.  Some police beats those!  The man left behind at Post
couldn't sleep much, either.  Chinese took to attacking the Posts.  A
stick of dynamite, fused and thrown on the roof, was apt to startle him
a bit if he slept.  Somehow they seemed to get all the dynamite they
wanted.  We caught one with a rifle and cartridges he'd loaded with
dynamite.  Pity he didn't get a chance to fire one of them!

"'It was a great day for that whole countryside when those "poor
innocents" were shipped back to China.  We all breathed one big sigh of
relief.  It was no fun searching round the plantations, as per orders.
It's mighty easy to knock a man out of the saddle by heaving suddenly
at his foot; and it's darned hard to shoot a man coming up on you from
right rear.  The Chinks were afraid of our chaps--good thing, too.
We'd put the fear of God into 'em.  But they didn't care a jot for the
town police; their hands were tied, and the blighters knew it.
Chinese, the kind we had, understand force, and force alone.  Justice
was something new to them.  They were contemptuous of it.  Of course we
had the lowest of the low.  Most of 'em had scabies; a lot were
leprous.  You have to knock that sort down first and then lead 'em up
to grace.  And yet they were sent home, thanks be, because the people
with axes to grind stirred up the sentimentalists!  A sentimentalist is
occasionally useful, if he is incapable of using judgment.  Only cure
for what ails him is to put him down some place alone with the objects
of his maudlin sympathy all about him.  He'll learn sanity then, if he
lasts long enough--especially if his rifle's the only thing between him
and his, and atrocities that'd turn your blood cold.

"'I'll never forget the look of bewilderment on Keir Hardie's face when
they howled him down at Durban.  He'd been drivelling about the
Brotherhood of Man--the equality of the native.  _But the women knew_.
They'd been born on lonely farms....  We had to throw all the strength
of the old Natal Mounted into Durban or the women would have torn him
to pieces.'

"'You judged a race by its worst specimens.  Is that quite safe--or
fair?' I asked.

"He closed up like a clam at that.  Just sat there with his mouth
tight, staring 'eyes front' at nothing.  I didn't fancy the look on his
face.  It was as if he'd been through hell and the horrors were riding
him still.  Mem'ry can be damnably cruel.  This won't do, I thought.
He's got to be jarred out of it.

"'Do you think that's fair?' I asked him again--'condemning a whole
people, a race, offhand, because you've only happened to brush up
against its blackest sheep?'

"He gave me that horrible grin again--Dor's caught it on some of his
'Inferno' faces.  'Lighted by the consuming fires of never-dying hate,'
you know.  He got up and limped about, getting a fresh grip on himself.
Then he stopped square in front of me.  his eyes boring into mine.

"'Those natives thought those Chinese were devils,' he spat out.  'I
_know_ it.'

"He sat down again at that and for a long time said nothing more.
Seemed to be fighting it out with himself whether to talk or not.  A
man has to spill his troubles sometimes, they say.  Anyway, he decided
to talk.  His voice was curiously tense, but quiet, when he spoke again.

"'It's a rather long story,' he said questioningly, 'if you care to
hear it?'

"I nodded for him to go on.

"'I'll cut it as short as I can,' he said.  'But--somehow I'd rather
like you to understand....  Not that anything matters now.  I'm about
through....  I'm unfair to those Chinese monsters, am I?  Listen and
then decide.'

"His hand went to his pocket.  He brought out that catskin thing again
and put it in my hand.

"'It belonged to Her,' he said.

"His voice wasn't very steady."




The Marbled Catskin



CHAPTER I

FATE TAKES THE LEAD REIN

I look a lot older than I am--the derelict began.  I'd just turned
twenty-two when I headed out to South Africa.  Fit as a fiddle and
sound as a nut, three hundred quid in my pocket, digestion of an
ostrich, not a care in the world, and a dashed good opinion of myself.
I never gave a thought to what I was going to do when I got there.
"Sufficient unto the day," and so forth.  I'd been in the Cavalry and
I'd ridden to hounds quite a bit at home.  Knew horses from forelock to
navicular bone, and loved 'em.  Pretty handy with a rifle, too, and not
so bad with a revolver.  Frightfully keen on shooting.  Africa ought to
suit me to a T, I thought, and I'd make her sit up and take notice of
me.  "It's a big country," I said to myself, "and packed with chances
for a bright, husky young fellow."  I was on my way, and the world--the
African part of it--was my oyster....  That was only four years ago.
Look at me now! ... Africa's a mysterious old body.  You never can
guess her.

All set to be another Cecil Rhodes, of course the first thing I did
when I got out there was to see a bit of the country--and of Life.  Got
in with a rather wild bunch--hard-riding, straight-shooting,
everlastingly thirsty, game to the core, most of 'em, full of
billy-be-damned.  We hit a pretty warm clip.  I was having a whale of a
time, I imagined.  Six months, though, and I was fed up, and there
wasn't much left in the pocket-book but room.  Where all the coin had
gone I'd brought out with me I couldn't figure out.  Not that I tried
over-hard.  Those were sunny, happy-go-lucky days.  I was full of
ginger; didn't know the meaning of worry.  Still, I knew it was about
time for me to sit down and have a straight talk with myself.  Yes, and
get me a job, or old Rhodes's ghost would be getting too much start on
me.  I did look about, too, but there didn't seem to be anything much
doing in a business way where I'd fit in.  I could ride, shoot,
wrestle, box, swim, run, and carry my liquor like an officer and a
gentleman, but no one seemed on the look-out for a young man with just
those sterling qualifications for nation-building.

Really I was beginning to feel a shade dubious and uneasy (if you can
at twenty-two and chock-a-block with sheer joy of life), when they
started to reorganize the South African Constabulary.  Baden-Powell's
idea, it was.  He got 'em together.  Took a leaf from the Canadians'
book and modelled on their R.N.W.M.P.  Officered and staffed we were
with veterans from that outfit mostly.  Our men were a mixed lot, but
right stuff: Canadian ex-policemen, chaps out of the Cavalry,
cowpunchers, Australian horse-breakers, New Zealand sheep-herders,
Arizonians, Texans, men of the Argentine, the Highlands, Cork, the
Yorkshire dales--rectors' sons, remittance men, black sheep of good old
families likely as not travelling under new names.  Oh, they were a
mixed lot--and hard-boiled.  But they'd guts and the nerve and beef for
the job, and it was no soft snap.  Pride was ours, too--Pride of the
Force and ourselves.  It's a decent foundation to build on.

I was as green as grass when I signed on.  Didn't even know the trick
of opening handcuffs; couldn't do it at first.  Got chaffed a lot over
that, naturally, but I'd never seen the things before....  Brought in
my man, though.

Some of my first duty details were rounding up these loathly Chinese
swine when they'd break away from the mines.  Saw lots more of them
than I craved to.  Very first job I had on my own was on an S.P.C.A.
complaint: Chinks at the mines used to stick a pig in a sack with just
its head out, while they stuffed it with food to fatten it....  And
Sundays they'd muster full force at the compound wire fence and disgust
any woman (or man, for that matter) who went by, with their unspeakable
indecencies.

They kept me pretty well on the jump till one day they told me (great
joy!) I was slated for transfer to Sankaeliland--outpost duty.  It was
about the time of Bambata's Zulu rebellion and there was something
doing every hour of the day, and night.  That suited me--action and
lots of it!  Something new for ever turning up, with just enough danger
in it to keep a man on his toes, eyes open, ears cocked, if he wanted
to hold his mess number.  And that gave a tang to life....
Ridin'--lots of ridin'.  Horses--undersized beggars, but keen as
mustard, with the sense and the tricks of polo ponies.  Enough sport
right along to keep your shootin'-eye top-hole....  It was a good life.
I was happy those days--didn't ask a thing better.

There was a lot of unrest in the air about that time--everyone fidgety,
with nothing special to tie to.  All hands were jumpy--natives
travelling about more than usual, nights mostly, uncommon quiet and
secretive.  That didn't look good.  They were getting hold of a few old
guns, too--Tower muskets and Boer roers.  Where they were coming in
from beat us.  We wanted badly to find out.

Our job was to be on the look-out for signs of a rising and pick up
Zulu envoys that kept coming and going--ringed-men they mostly were, so
it wasn't much of a trick to spot 'em.  A ringed-man?  Why, down in
Zululand he's a chap that, in his chief's opinion, or his king's, has
reached full manhood--up to warrior measurements.  He can wear a ring
on his head then, gum and hair mixed and worked round the crown of his
head.  Inch or so thick it is.  Sort of decoration down in Chaka's
country, they used to say.  Marked "the warrior bold."  They're real
fighters in those parts.  Old Chaka made a nation out of his Zulus.  No
army of his could go home with its tail between its legs.  He'd turn
out his boys and kill them.  It was his law, of course, that no
returning warrior could appear before him bearing arms.  They never
thought of breaking a law of his, so the boys waded in and slaughtered
'em.  Not often, though.  They all soon got to live up to the Zulu
saying: "If we go forward we die; if we go back we die?  Forward, then!"

These chaps we were bringing in, they were mostly ringed-men--big,
dignified blighters; no end good scrappers.  My word, yes!  Any holding
charge would do to arrest 'em on those days, so long as we brought them
in.  Used to nip 'em sometimes for peddling without a licence!  That
was a pet joke.

There was one thing special had us guessing--worrying, too: all over
the district the natives began slaughtering their white pigs and white
chickens.  There wasn't any law to stop them.  It was their own stock.
And there wasn't a thing we could do or say.  But they only butchered
the _white_ ones!  That gave us some bad half-hours.  A bit creepy and
suggestive, what?  We thought so, anyway.  We were white.

Our Post was the usual tin-roofed, one-room shack they all are: three
beds, for the corporal and us two troopers, rifle and saddle-racks.  We
had a native hut alongside that we messed in, and another, a bit
smaller, for an office.  Stables close, of course, and two or three
more huts for our native police-boys.  But the country that old Post
was planted in!  It was a bit of the real Eden, a picture you never got
your fill of, with the grand old range back of it for a frame.  I can
see it now, like I used to, standing at the door, supper over, smoking!
The sun dropping out of sight like a great gold ball--the high hills
mantled in afterglow, rose-tinted, reflecting the sun's rays till the
last of them left the tips of the hills, the peaks melting into the
black velvet of the night before the wonderful southern moon came
up--the moon and the cross that isn't a cross at all! ... Perfumes of
the witching hours--aromatic wood-smoke--acrid smell of the
cooking-fires, with our boys squatting around them, telling stories!

It was such a night.  I was idling at the door.  Morton, the other
trooper, hadn't come in yet from patrol.  The corporal hailed me from
the office.  He'd been fussing over some beastly reports.

"Got a job for you in the morning, Ralph," he said.  "Better make an
early start....  Ever hear of a queer old fish named Gentil, white man
they tell me, lives t'other side the range?  No one seems to know much
about him.  Got a farm tucked away in some hidden kloof[1] over there.
Seems to stand in somehow with old Sankaeli.  Hear he's got a flock of
native wives.  Been there a long time according to the say-so.  And
that's about all I can tell you.  We haven't much of a line on him.
He's suspected of peddling liquor.  Just possible he's running guns,
too!  Up to you to know when you get back.  Better turn in early.  Got
some riding ahead of you."


[1] Canyon.


It promised to be a bit better than some details.  I liked being out on
my own with my mare for company....  But at that it wasn't worth
thinking twice over.  I finished my pipe and turned in.  Slept like a
log, too.  Didn't guess Fate had her hand on my lead rein.  What's that
Horace says: "_Fata volentem ducunt_."[2]


[2] Fate leads the willing.


      *      *      *      *      *

There are some mornings, thanks to memory, that are everlasting.  When
I think of that one I seem to breathe again the clear, exquisitely
scented air, that heady, delicious elixir that flows from the jewelled
high breasts of Africa--see the giant peaks etched against dawn's glory
of rose and opal, with great washes of blue shadow--feel the flooding
life between my knees as Jean, my mare, danced and sidled up the high
veldt trail, her polished hoofs flashing through the dew-heavy dust.
Black she was, of that rare blackness like patent leather that glitters
in the sun--one short white sock and a perfect little star! ... She was
a fine mare.

She had her imperfections, granted.  Always she would pirouette
kittenishly the first ten or twelve miles.  After that she was simply a
dream, with her long, easy thoroughbred's walk, hind foot stepping it a
good foot over the mark of the fore--her whalebone canter and that
gallop of hers that made the world stream past in an unbroken line, the
lean head outstretched, the small curved ears showing the Basuto blood,
the right one for ever moving forward and back to listen for a whisper!
Rocks, holes, bush, everything taken without seeming effort in that
magnificent stride!  Never once did she fail me....  Ah, well!  She's
dead now!

I managed the early start.  Jean's spirits leaped with mine as we
danced blithely up the trail.  The world was very good to both of us.
Sackabolo birds flaunted their flags as they fluttered by.  Small
feathered folk chirped and twittered in the high grasses.  Once a grey
shadow under trees took shape as a huge Koodoo bull that laid back his
spiral horns along his sides and with effortless bounds faded silently
through the low thorn into nothingness, his thin light striping plain
enough in movement.  A high-perched sentinel baboon barked menace to me
and warning to all his people in the caves and rocks, the echoes
booming by kloof and kranz[3] till the topmost peaks chattered back:
"Waugh!  An armed man moves on the valley trail!"


[3] Cliff.


Then, sudden as thought, a giant shaft of light and vivifying warmth
struck down from above the shadow of a nearer mountain.  Off came the
tunic, to be strapped to the pommel; up went sleeves.  The sun was
risen.  A new day had begun.

It was a long ride round to Sankaeli's kraal.  Not that it was any
great distance as the crow would fly, but the range stretched between
like a great rampart, the pass a good thirty miles, and almost as far
to back-track on the other side--sixty miles pounding leather on a
broiling day!  The heat waves beat down when the sun began climbing, as
though someone had opened an oven door....  I was always keen for new
trails.  I studied that far-flung backbone of the range--Sankaeli's
Wall, our boys called it.  At one point it seemed to break, as if
shattered by some convulsion of Nature in a long past time, leaving a
deep kloof, densely bushed.  I pulled Jean down to a walk and kept
sizing up that shadowy line I fancied might be a great gash in the
bushed slope.  And the more I mulled over the chance, the more possible
it seemed.  It was getting uncomfortably hot.  Jean's ears were
twitching and her neck glistening wet.  She swung her head in to the
cliff side, her sensitive nostrils quivering.

"Water somewhere about," I thought.  I knew my mare.  She was right at
that.  We hadn't made fifty yards more when we came to an immense
boulder, a tiny spruit[4] tinkling at its foot.  It seemed to come
around and from behind the big rock.  I dismounted to have a look, Jean
crowding at my heels.  At the base of the boulder was a trail so faint
and almost obliterated it must have been long abandoned.  It made
almost an acute angle about the base of the rock and (which was queer
for that sort of country) it widened as it twisted crazily upward, and
was fairly clear going.  We were out of the broiling sun and the
coolness was a bit of all right.  I hated to go back to that blazing
hot trail, though I knew I ought to.  "Might as well see where this
thing goes," I thought, as a sop to conscience.  And then I did get a
surprise.


[4] Streamlet.


The faintly defined path took another of those sudden twists and led
into a narrow cleft that ran right into the mountain-side.  Twilight
lingered there, and a wonderful silence.  There was no twitter of
birds.  Even the shrilling of the cicadas had been blotted out.  There
wasn't a sound but the elfin whispering of the little stream....
There's a lily grows in the high kloofs of Sankaeliland--a lovely
yellow arum--and it was there in the shade of every rock.  Where the
stream trickled and tinkled it grew in prodigal profusion, sort of
"Field of the Cloth of Gold."  Stillness seemed to have reigned there
since the birth of time.

That kloof or canyon went on for a good half-mile, widening out in
places till it would be all of a hundred feet between the
straight-up-and-down rock walls-- pinching in other places so that the
mare's sides brushed the rocks as we squeezed through.  It brought us
to a tumbled gulch, through which the dim, disused trail crooked and
turned, mounting steadily, at no place over steep.  It wasn't a game
runway.  There was no spoor[5] of any animal.


[5] Footprint; track.


I mounted again and we kept going.  Sometimes we were scrambling over
boulders tossed helter-skelter, grotesquely--then ploughing through
lush velvety moss--now cantering on bald, bare rock, smooth and level
as a pavement--now pastern-deep in a slimy, slippery blue clay that was
almost gumbo, the mare finding hard footing in it.  And all the while
we kept going up!  When I stopped to breathe Jean, we must have covered
a mile and a half or more from the beaten trail and gained easily
fifteen hundred feet altitude.  It was going right the way I wanted,
too!  I was mightily pleased.  If I'd dropped on a short cut to
Sankaeli's district it'd be a lucky find, particularly if we kept our
teeth shut on knowing about it, which we would.

I might have guessed things were running too smoothly not to have some
trick in store.  The gorge pinched in so that I had to dismount and
lead along the right bank of the spruit, the mare's hoofs sinking
soundlessly in the thick carpet of springy turf.  We rounded a corner
of basalt and came suddenly to the end!  The way was blocked completely
by a boulder half the size of Gibraltar that in the years gone by must
have split off and tumbled from the crags above, and under which the
little stream that had been our guide now vanished with a flash and a
chuckle.  On every side forbidding walls of rock towered precipitously,
scarcely a foothold or a handgrip anywhere.  For a horse there was but
one possible exit--the way by which we had come into that sylvan
cul-de-sac.  And then I began to realize that my bent for exploring was
likely to prove a confounded nuisance.  I would have to go back and
round by the regular track, having wasted half a day.  By rough
reckoning I was now fairly sure Sankaeli's kraal, or at least this
Gentil's farm, must be just about over the lip of the cliff--a couple
of miles at most, and a good fifty it was around!  Study those cliffs
as I would, they glowered back "Verboten!"

One more case of "so near and yet so far," I reflected.  Maybe I added
a few ripe cuss words, for Jean looked up from cropping the lush wet
grass, reproach in her eye.  I was mad enough at things in general to
swear at her just for that.  A man's mare's got no right to look an
"I-told-you-so" at him.  Then and there I got my back up ...  If only I
could find some way to scale those steep cliffs I wouldn't have to go
back?  Jean was safe enough where she was, with such grazing as she
seldom got.  I could knee-halter[6] her and reconnoitre.  No sooner
said than done.  I off-saddled, cacheing saddle and rifle.  Pig-headed
and obstinate, I was willing to take some long chances.  "Anyhow," I
reflected, "I may as well have a look-see at what's on the other side
of this big rock, if I can only get round it some way.  Must be pretty
well through the mountain by this time."


[6] To couple the head to one foreleg close enough to prevent the
animal moving fast.


There were creepers of a sort half-clothing the north face of the
blockading boulder.  I managed to work myself round twenty feet or so,
clutching them with my fingers, till I struck a cleft in the rock side.
That made it easier going, and at last I wriggled myself round to the
other side, where I could look down.  I strangled an exultant shout,
for I had not guessed wrong.

There was quite a sizable farm tucked away in a strip of verdant
valleyland, no doubt this Gentil's place; twenty or more native huts in
a scattered group; orchard trees--peach and apricot mostly; one larger
hut almost in the centre of the farmstead, in a square, built white
man's fashion; blue gums, likely grown from imported seed, under which
sheep and goats were drowzing--a pretty large flock of the goats.  The
huts were of the common sort, round and thatched with grass.
Everything seemed to be well looked after.  The farm was not enclosed
in the native way, with a hedge of the prickly pear.  This further
satisfied me some white man was boss of the works; and if any white man
had his home in that quarter it could only be this queer fish Gentil.
The mountains lifted their huge fronts on all sides from the edge of
the pasture fields, where oxen grazed, with a few sleek horses.  A
laughing stream came tumbling down the hillside and went wandering
about the farm.  It made a pretty picture.

But how to get down to it was quite another thing.  It seemed sheer
impossibility.  Bald rocks, up-ended like the walls of a room, dropped
hundreds of feet below me.  Not so much as a clump of wachten-beetje[7]
or a stunted mimosa bush showed anywhere on their faces.  No fault in
the rock offered foothold or handgrip.  It looked very much at that as
if I'd have to retreat and take the long, hot roundabout trail.  After
all, "orders is orders!"


[7] A South African thorn; literally "Wait-a-bit."


And then I happened to notice that, just at the lip of the cliff, a
gnarled old banyan reached out its arms into nothingness, its twisted
lower branches sound and safe.  I squirmed about till I could get hold
of and crawl out on the stoutest limb, swinging crazily with the world
beneath me.  The limb lay almost along the cliff face, and this broke,
about a tall man's height, into a little cup-like depression between
the great rocks, a mighty pretty nook, flower-carpeted and deep-shaded
with perfume-breathing mimosa shaking its golden balls of springtime
bloom.  The little spruit trickled out again from the rock, to tumble
(still chuckling) into a darkly-deep pool over which the mimosas
stretched out shielding arms.  That waterfall looked for all the world
like a bridal veil.

I took a good grip on my swaying perch, dangled my legs in space, swung
back and forth a few times, and let myself go!  My heels hit the
spray-soaked grass, and I sprawled face-down.  As I picked myself up,
growling, and started to scrape the black mud from my breeches, I was
startled almost out of my wits by a quickly smothered ripple of silvery
bell-like laughter--the merry mirth-music of care-free girlhood!

I forgot all about Gentil and his farm and his gun-running--the duty
that had brought me up here in the heart of the mountains and this
fairyland nook--the disfiguring blob of mud that marked the success of
my leap but made a wreck of my breeches any inspecting officer would
have thrown a fit over.  One thought possessed me--to locate the source
of that stifled delicious laughter!

I peered into the foliage-screened background--nothing there.  There
was no fairy perched in the trees.  The cliffs were bare; no cover for
so much as a dassie[8] to hide behind.  The flower-sprinkled turf was
an unbroken carpet of colour.  My eyes followed the little spruit that
went tumbling down the cliff-face--stared, questing, into the
mimosa-roofed deeps of the tarn, over which the rock walls hung a
tapestry of glorious lilies.


[8] The South African rock rabbit.


_And then I saw Her!_

She was in the pool itself, a glowing nymph, graceful as a sculptor's
dream of Love incarnate!  Two wide-set eyes of sapphire pictured
amazement absolute--consuming curiosity--but no fear.  No fear and no
self-consciousness.  Lips red as pomegranates were still half-parted
coaxingly; light laughter lingered on them.  Her hair of spun gold was
lightly wound round and round her haughtily lifted head....  A white
girl beyond doubt!  A white girl dazzlingly beautiful, and not more
than seventeen.  A golden girl, for the ardent African sun had touched
that radiant flesh only as might a lover.  The water where she stood
caressed her dimpled knees.  One hand rested lightly on a ledge of
rock.  In the other, all forgotten, was a gorgeous lily....  She wore
no more than the unmarried maids of Sankaeliland: a string of blue
glass beads thrice wound about her firm young throat--a blue belt or
girdle, and, suspended from it, her moocha--a sporran of a marbled
catskin!

      *      *      *      *      *

She was standing there in the pool!  To the cliff face the rock lay
level as a floor--a sort of natural platform, that woodland eyrie.  It
hung in space--and what a prospect: the line of the Steelpoort river, a
silver ribbon strung out a hundred miles--old Spitzkop towering
skyward, a brooding sentinel for ever on guard over his broad, misty
bush veldt.  The tinkle of the water made you think of elfin bells, and
all the crystal air was heavy with the warm scent of mimosa bloom.
Level with the cliff lip a hawk hung motionless, watching with his keen
yellow eyes the tree-embowered farm, and the fowl in particular, I
suppose.  That cliff dropped sheer away like the wall of a skyscraper.
The pool was all silver and glancing shadow, blue and gold and opal,
reflecting the sun and the sky, with a dream wisp of a rainbow where
the breeze caressed the spray from the fall.  It all seemed to fit
in--to be just the right setting for that golden girl.  She was
Psyche--She was Echo--She was everything men have dreamed of--glorious,
glowing girlhood!

She leaned a little forward, poised daintily, questing, her great
violet eyes puckered up in delicious puzzlement at me, standing there
like a wooden Indian.  Time had stopped for both of us.  Then she
smiled, and that smile about finished me.  Thought surely I must be
day-dreaming--of that witch Venus, reborn more tantalizing than ever!
I daren't move for fear I'd wake up.  But I did manage a shaky salute
that ought to have got me a proper call-down....  And I faked a grin....

"Good morning, miss," I said, like a silly ass, as if we'd just met in
Bond Street.

She didn't say anything to that--just looked bewilderment.  There were
diamond points in those eyes of hers.  Seeing she didn't make the
English, I tried Dutch.  Drew another blank--but once more she smiled,
and I wouldn't have changed places with the O.C. himself.  Then I had a
shot at it in the native:

"_Sack-a-bawna!_"[9]


[9] Good-morning.


That had more sense to her.  A dimple played hide-and-seek.

"_Sack-a-bawna, n'Koos!_"[10] she came back at me, getting her little
pink tongue round the clicks of the lingo and no trouble at all.
Mighty few whites can do that.


[10] Good-morning, Chief.


And there we were--stumped!  "Good morning" is all right enough for a
starter, but it's not satisfying as _tte--tte_ chat.  There were
lots of things I wanted to hear her say, but I'd been struck dumb.
Always was a bashful sort.  Racked my brain for native words, but none
I could think of would help.  Police talk didn't fill the bill.
Somehow, too, I hated to be jabbering native to her.  She was _white_.
And she kept looking at me, likely enough trying to puzzle out things
from her side, and no less up against it than I was.  Every once in a
while she'd turn loose the smile, as if the sun wasn't doing its best!
... I can't put the thing in words, but I fancied then something in
each of us was reaching out to the other! ... She was all as surprised
as I was; I could see that.  And too curious to be frightened, I
figured it....  My Lord!  All at once it struck me--she must have been
taking a bath and I'd come barging in, yammering and staring at her!
What sort of pup must she take me for?  The cold chills ran down my
neck--and I'd thought it was hot!  Even smiled, she had, when she must
have been scared half to death....  What could I do?  If only she'd
listen to honest English!  Like a gawk I stood there, running over my
stock of Kaffir.  My vocabulary wasn't any too good, and most of the
words I knew wouldn't fit in at all.  I could have kicked myself
properly.  Mean?  Meaner than a sheep-killing dog, I felt.  Must have
reddened up--ears burned, I know.  And I daren't look again....

Right then I got a sprinkle of cold water!  It startled me so my head
jerked up, and if the little minx wasn't splashing water at me, playful
as a kitten!  She'd edged a bit closer, too--didn't seem to be worrying
over the conventions.  Probably never heard of them--so pure and
innocent, everything was all right to her.  But I'd stood grinning at
her, though I swear I'd never thought anything nasty, either.  But a
hyena would have had more manners.  What to say I didn't know, and if I
had I couldn't have said it.  While I scratched my thick head for an
idea, she spoke again:

"_Hamba gachle, n'Koos!_"[11]  She was sidling out of the water as she
said it, at the far side of the pool.  She was going away!  How she
could go anywhere beat me, but I didn't want her to go.


[11] Good-bye: literally "Hasten slowly."


"Please don't go," I blurted out, like a fool, talking English again,
and I started towards her.  She understood that all right.  Just one
graceful, effortless bound and she was on the bank, light-footed as an
impala[12] of the plains.  Like a swooping bird she'd picked up a
little assegai, and with the thing in her hand she flashed exquisite
defiance.  Looked awf'ly cunning at that.  If I thought at all, I must
have had a fool idea she was trying to tease, but I was rattled every
way and I took a step forward.  The assegai whizzed.  I just managed to
drop and duck it....  When I scrambled to my feet she was gone!


[12] Antelope.


_It wasn't a split second!  She was there--and she wasn't!_  Gone as
quickly and as noiselessly as the golden reflection of a hand-glass
thrown on a dark cliff when the hand that holds the glass moves.

The whole thing was getting queerer and queerer.  Could she really have
been there at all?  Had I got a touch of the sun?  If she was real, who
could she be?  If there was anyone like her in the whole country we
must have heard about her.  I wasn't quite sure of anything.

Yet everything else seemed real enough: the familiar hills--those
up-and-down walls of rock--my friendly banyan tree--the well-ordered
farm dozing among the blue gums on the flat below--the hawk still
poised on its watch--the cascade's faint tinkle--drone of insect
life--swish of water falling somewhere away below--all substantial
facts!  Those rocks were certainly solid.  The spray from the falls was
wet.  But could there have been a wonderful golden girl?  How could
there be, here in Sankaeliland, and never a whisper about her?  If she
were real, where, then, was she?  If she----

Something hard turned under my boot.  I stooped and picked it up....
It was her trim, sharp assegai.

Round and round and round again I searched every foot of that nook with
its waterfall and its pool, its lilies and its encircling walls of
rock.  Not a trace of her!  Nor a clue to how or where she had
vanished.  "Must be some key to the riddle," I kept telling myself.  If
there was, I couldn't get hold of it.  I began to think of some of the
fantastic things I'd heard since I'd come to the country: Old Africa
has many an odd trick.  She holds her secrets close.

I'd kept poking about mechanically, and at length in a tangle of mimosa
at the very lip of the cliff I nosed out the end of a long reim.[13]
It was tied to a great root and trailed off loose in space.  All of
thirty feet it was, with big knots every foot or so--sort of primitive
ladder.  Not likely others followed my banyan tree route?  I stretched
out flat on the rock and peered over.  At first there didn't seem a
thing breaking the sheer descent--four or five hundred feet of a
drop--to where the cliff ended in a steepling slope.  I went over it
again with my eye, inch by inch this time.  The rock wall at one place
did seem to overhang slightly?  There might be a ledge there, invisible
from above?  The reim suggested as much.  Could She have gone that way?
In the one brief instant my eyes had been off her?  No chance!  But the
whole thing was weird.  Why puzzle over a part where all is mystery?
That dangling rawhide might lead somewhere.  It seemed safe enough,
securely fastened.  I could scramble down and up again.  There might be
some narrow trail to the valley farm.  "Nothing ventured, nothing
learned!"


[13] A strip of rawhide much used in Africa in place of rope.


I made sure it was all fast, took a good grip, crooked a leg round the
reim and eased myself over the lip.  There were twenty-eight knots in
that reim.  I'd counted.  I had passed the twelfth knot when that tiny
grot of miracles handed me another jolt: my foot had found firm if
precarious footing on the narrow horizontal shelf.  A cautious
reconnaissance all but convinced me there was a narrow path hugging the
cliff so close as to be almost part of it.  "So that must be how she
did it," I thought.  If I'd stopped to use any reason, it was patently
absurd.  But the day had been packed with fantasies; one more mattered
little.  I set foot tentatively on the thread of trail--a chamois would
be none too sure of it--when I all but let go my hold in the face of a
fresh surprise that scrapped, then and there and finally, my new
half-conclusions: _She had laughed again!  Right above my head!_

It could be no one else.  That rippling music and my golden girl were
one and indivisible.  She must have been hiding somewhere!  And I could
have sworn I'd searched so closely a pin couldn't have escaped me!
Holding tight to the reim, I looked up.  Two mischievous eyes twinkled
straight into mine.  Then they drew back as I scrambled up again--must
have done it well under half a minute....  The pool was there--but no
girl!

There was no one there--positively!  I combed every tiny shrub--looked
under every stone almost--investigated every scarp or jut of rock--and
about every leaf and lily and blade of grass.  But there was no golden
girl--no girl at all.  There was no mortal way out but by the reim, and
she'd not touched that!  Perhaps even then she was peeping out at me
from some magical hiding-place, laughing to herself in this game of
hide-and-seek?  She couldn't have melted into thin air! ... I wasn't so
sure of that, though.  "Africa is the land of the impossible; her
mysteries are the wisdom of the ages."  I'd read that in a book.

Meanwhile the sun was sinking.  Shadows settled, purple-black, on the
lower hills.  My watch said four o'clock.  If I'd found a way to
Gentil's stead I would have to step lively to follow it.  That
spiderweb path was no place for a man at night.  With one last useless
look about me, I swung myself off again and went down the reim,
monkey-fashion.

Once on it, that crazy trail wasn't so bad--for a Swiss guide.
Troopers aren't mountaineers, however.  It took a bit of doing in
spots, where it clung to the cliff by the eyelashes, just about
foot-width, with only grassroots to hold on by, and a few hundred feet
of a tumble if they gave.  I didn't dare look down.  There were places,
too, where the water oozed through the rooks--plaguey slippy, those
bits.  Once or twice I thought I was gone, but I managed somehow to
catch on to something in time.  It was better going after a bit.  The
trail widened where it crossed a curious sort of hanging gallery with
weird paintings on the wall--animals and birds, and what I took to be
meant for men.  Must have been there hundreds of years.  Creepers all
but covered some of them.

There were bridges, too, tree-trunks so old and rotten I expected 'em
to give every time--sometimes a single log; sometimes two together, the
bark chipped for footing.  These spanned deep canyons.  But never a
footprint anywhere.  That trail couldn't have been used for years and
years.  There were no signs of any other.  I wondered a bit, but it was
taking me where I wanted to go, and that was the main thing.

Where the cliffs about ended the trail all at once seemed to stop.  It
really didn't matter much then.  The fields were in plain sight and
nothing in the way a man couldn't make through.  I had caught sight of
a little black cobra, one of the spitting sort that they say will blind
you.  It wriggled behind a rock and I gave it the road.  Watched my
step closer after that.

As the sun went down I was in the outer field.  Looking back, it
puzzled me how I'd ever come down.  Black against the pulsing crimson
glow the serrated edge of the mountains towered.  A baboon barked
harshly from a high peak.  A troop of blue monkeys whipped across in
front of me.  I had seen no sign of anyone since that glimpse of her
laughing face peeping down at me over the cliff.  Once on the level
earth again, I wondered if she really had.  It all seemed
chimerical....  I'd not risk talking about it at the Post.  No one
would believe me.

By the time I was half-way across the farm I'd decided to say nothing
there either.  If the lady _did_ show herself, it would be her lead ...
She couldn't be any of this Gentil's people, for the corporal had said
he had native wives.  The more I muddled over it, the more the mystery
grew--and I could think of little else.  Wondered, of course, if I'd
ever see her again.  It wasn't likely.  A young lady who went about
very much _au naturel_ and seemed to climb like a monkey to the
mountain top for her bath, armed with a mighty nice assegai and
perfectly willing to use it, wasn't apt to be among those present at
any social doings in our countryside.  I couldn't picture her handing
me a cup of coffee and asking if the mail from home was in....

Something halted me right there--a little run of stones clattering down
the hillside.  I scanned the empty cliffs.  Empty?  Well--almost empty.
My eye caught a note of movement--very slight: a branch of tree-thorn
trembled as though some hand had just released it....  For a fleeting
instant I glimpsed her, running lithely between two great rocks at the
foot of the cliffs.  She _had_ followed me down!




CHAPTER II

MYSTERIES MULTIPLY

So she did belong thereabouts!  We probably should meet again!  My
pulse quickened and my pace....  Could she be kin of Gentil by any
chance?  I slackened up.  Daughter of a supposed whisky-peddler
suspected of gun-running that I'd come to put over the jumps?  One
consolation, I reflected--it was no more than suspicion yet, either
way.  Might not be a thing wrong about the man.  I was willing to give
him the benefit of the doubt.  What was it the corporal had said?  "No
one knows much about him.  We haven't any line on him."

At that, he _might_ be something to Her?  I had not seen where my
sprite disappeared.  She had fluttered like a sunbeam for an instant
only in the line of vision.  Likely in another minute she would be
telling someone of her big adventure.  Her mother?  That would mean
some explaining! ... _But she had not been any more dressed when I had
caught that last glimpse of her than she was at the pool!_

Complications thickened.  I gave it up.  No use speculating till the
facts cleared themselves.  I had my duty to do.  Some comfort I was
working under orders....  Turning over the puzzles of the day as I came
along, I had been making progress.  Scent of peach and apricot blossoms
told me I was in the orchard.  Night had fallen swiftly in that valley
shut in by the great hills.  Farm buildings shaped themselves, looming
solidly black.  Dim fires glowed by the native huts.  Light showed from
the master's house as I neared it....  Yet everything was silent!  No
kaffirs crowded curiously.  Not a dog prowled about to bark suspicion.
Mighty strange! ... Well, I should soon know what it all meant.  Nerve
tension began to tell.  And I missed the mare.  Not often we worked
afoot.

I had no preconceptions of what my man might be like, but everything,
so far as I could judge in the dimness, bespoke him a good farmer.  It
was a lot cleaner than most outlying places--tidier--better kept up.
White stones marked a flower-bordered walk.  Scents strange to Africa,
yet unforgettably familiar, lingered about the garden--mignonette among
them, like a breath from home....  There was no one on the stoep.  I
knocked.

"Hullo there!" I shouted.

Someone called within.  A light moved, a big man bearing it.  Tall,
broad-shouldered, patriarchially bearded, roughly clad, yet he moved
with unconscious grace.  There was something about him suggesting the
elegance of old nobility.  His long, thin hands were powerful and
certified to much toil, yet his nails were well cared for.  His heavy
hide veldtschoon[1] were clean, neatly laced and tied.  A trooper's
bound to notice these inconsequential details.  We have 'em well rubbed
into us.


[1] Farm boots.


As he towered before me, framed in the doorway, shading the lamp with
his hand, his face was calmly impassive, and yet not mask-like, for the
eyes were warm and kindly.  It was not a strong face, and it hinted of
much suffering.  He greeted me in formal Dutch, slow-spoken, gravely
courteous, with no hint of the surprise one would have expected.  A
gentleman once, unquestionably.  They say "once a gentleman, always a
gentleman."  His eyes perplexed me most.  They were not a coward's, nor
a criminal's, but they mirrored anxiety that was almost terror,
determination offset by resignation.  He was strangely
complex--compelling compassion as a man of sorrows--damnably
weak-chinned.

"I regret to have kept you waiting," he said, feeling for each word,
the voice deep and sonorous.  "We are sadly upset this night.  That is
my apology....  Please enter....  Have you dined? ... Your horse?  Has
it care?"

Not even when I told him I was afoot did his face hint amazement, and
that should have been as much of a facer as any I had stumbled upon.
Interest seemed dead in him.

Without further words he ushered me into his living-room, waved me to
an extra-comfortable chair (one of those half-reclining affairs with
long arm extensions, such as they have in India and in Africa), and set
out glasses, rare old brandy, and water cold as ice.  I poured myself a
fairly stiff tot.  He took a thimblefull, for mere courtesy's sake, I
imagined.

"_Prosit!_" said I, tossing down mine.

"_Salaam!_" he gave me back, his glass barely touching his lips.  The
man seemed distinctly uneasy--restless--distrait.  Yet instinctively I
felt that my coming had nothing to do with whatever was bothering him.

"A bath is being prepared.  It will rest you," he told me in his slow,
precise Dutch.  "And dinner will be ready when you are....  Now may I
ask you to excuse me for a little time--and honour me by considering as
yours my poor house and all within it."

With that he bowed ceremoniously and went out, leaving me with a bit
more to puzzle on--the farm in this hidden kloof, the secret trail to
that fairyland mountain pool, my golden girl of magic, the man himself
perhaps most of all.  He had said "_Salaam_" when we touched glasses.
That meant India!

My host gone, his room challenged attention.  Widely different from the
living quarters of most farmhouses it was, with an atmosphere of
culture and refinement: simply furnished, yet wholly comfortable; and
very restful.  Nothing anywhere to suggest a woman about, unless it was
the organ that filled one end of the room--a massive, complicated
American affair with half-pipes, pedal clavier, and a double-banked
keyboard.  But a satiny meerschaum, black as ebony, lay on the
music-rack.  That didn't look womanish.  Evidently he was fond of music.

I pawed over the heap of sheet music on the stand by the instrument:
Adolfati, Ahle, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bach, Tschaikowsky,
Handel, Obrecht, Liapounov, Lichnowsky, Lomakin, Brahms--a cosmopolitan
yet catholic selection, and mostly Russian composers, but no trash.
Largely sacred it was, with some great oratorios and a few symphony
masterpieces.  I hoped he'd play for me.

There were a few pictures, worth-while originals I judged.  But mostly
the walls were lined with books--old, old books many of them, bound in
a dull grey leather, apparently all by hand and all by the same hand.
His books, too, were almost exclusively religious--theological works in
tiers (Russian, Dutch and German, besides what I took to be Hebrew and
Greek), commentaries in second place, with history, philosophy,
science, political economy--not a thing in fiction.  No sign of a
magazine.  His mind, it seemed, craved rather substantial fare.

Only one in a score or so of books I dipped into was printed in
English; and it, by the way, was about the only one that had not been
rebound in that grey leathery stuff.  It was Lydekker's British Museum
handbook on the fauna of the mid-Asian high lands; and when I reached
it down it opened itself at the section devoted to the cat family.
There was something pencilled on the margin, but I couldn't make it
out.  The language was foreign, with some letters different from ours,
and the writing was very faint.  Of course I could read the paragraph
marked.  It was about a species called _Felis Marmorata_--the Marbled
Cat.  Remarkably rare, it was claimed.

I hadn't quite finished it when the servant came to pilot me to the
bath.  Giant of a kaffir he was, very old and dignified.  Showed me the
shelf of big rough towels, with soap, brushes, even bath salts!  I
hadn't seen such a lay-out in months.  Then he backed himself out,
saying something about dinner.  That bath settled one thing for me: a
chap that would be so thoughtful for the comfort of a casual guest
could not be a border villain true to any type I knew.  Whatever mess
he had got himself into, I was slightly prejudiced for the defence.

When I had finished my soak and my scrub, dinner was served.  There was
nothing special about the spread, but every detail was right--fine
linen and silver and china, you know.  It was a tasty dinner, too--a
clear soup, an entre that wouldn't have disgraced the best chef in
Jo'burg, a nice crisp salad, a sweet, and prime coffee--Turkish I'd
say.  The old gentleman did the honours handsomely, but ate nothing.  I
supposed he already had dined, and I could see he was fidgety: started
at every sound, kept getting up to peer out of the window, and shot a
few questions at the table-boy that I couldn't make any sense of.  We
didn't talk much.  My Dutch wasn't any too good and he didn't have as
much as I did, and what he had was rusty.  Seemed friendly and frank
enough.  By the way he acted I took it whatever was bothering him
hadn't anything to do with me or a guilty conscience.

After they had cleared the table and he had brought out cigars, I
concluded it was about time to get down to business.  Didn't fancy the
job, but all the more reason to get it over with.  I was wondering how
to start in, putting things up to him as decently as I could, when he
gave me the lead.  My uniform spoke for itself.  He pointed to it and
smiled.

"May I ask, without discourtesy clouding hospitality, if it is to any
official matter hereabouts that I owe the pleasure of your company?" he
asked in his involved, formal way.

That was putting it right up to me, and I saw no sense beating about
the bush.  So I told him point-blank why I'd been sent to look him
over.  I watched him close while he got the gist of it, but he didn't
seem in the least concerned--more like amused.  Told me it was all
quite ridiculous and that he was glad I had come.  Would I remain as
his guest as long as I could and cared to?  I could go where I liked,
do as I liked, talk to whom I liked, and (he took a big bunch of keys
from his pocket and laid them in my hand), search where I liked and
whenever I liked.  The way he said it convinced me he hadn't much to
hide.  Chances were he was glad of company.  The monotony of his life,
it struck me, would be devilish trying.  I let the old chap see I
believed him, and that apparently pleased him; and I told him I might
stay a day or two if he'd put me up....  In the back of my head I'd the
idea I might find out something of that girl.

That was a strange sort of evening!  I wanted to find out all I could
about him.  That was duty.  But he was a gentleman and my considerate
host.  There are some things one doesn't do.  He wanted all the news
for years past, on lines I didn't know much about: Had Russia absorbed
Japan yet?  Did they make Kuropatkin governor of the Punjab?  Had the
British cleared out of India?  I could answer that one, anyway.  He
seemed puzzled to hear they had not.  Russian himself, he told
me--"once in holy orders."  That accounted for the library make-up.
There was a vague something in his talk, too, of a diplomatic mission
he seemed to have made a hash of, but I couldn't make head or tail of
half he told me.  One thing, however, I did get, for he said it two or
three times, more to himself than to me--"The Little Father never
forgives!"

He had been there in Sankaeliland, I gathered, very many years, with no
outside contacts whatever.  It was quiet.  He was not unhappy.  It had
come to be home to him.  His farm was good and he wanted for nothing.
Never had any labour trouble; the king sent him women to till his
fields and to do for him generally.  There were boys to hunt and to
herd the cattle.  Sometimes he made gifts of horses and cattle to Chief
Sankaeli.  Means were found for him to send out the products of his
farm, in exchange for such things as he wanted.  He was working on a
cure for horse-sickness, and that kept his mind occupied.  It was a
goodly life--for here was peace.

"The peace part is all nice enough," I agreed, "but you must get mighty
lonesome with no folks of your own kind around?"

"My wife journeyed hither with me," he said, very quietly.  "She has
slept a long time now, on the mountainside where the lilies grow."

"And you never married again?"

He shook his head.  "My women here have served faithfully.  They
suffice."

"She left you no children--your wife?  No son?  No daughter?"

His face hardened and darkened as I leaned forward eagerly.

"I have no child," he answered.  "We once had a pretty babe.  Her also
I lost--soon after my good vrouw."

Another budding theory gone smash.  I checked an inclination to speak
then of my sprite of the mountain pool.  Looking back, she again seemed
more likely to have been fay than mortal--the illusive spirit of
Springtime, Youth, Laughter.  I said nothing about her.  Talk turned to
commonplaces.  He brought out books, invoices, order sheets,
correspondence, accounts, all very orderly and complete.  From these I
saw his liquor imports were by no means immoderate, not more than
sufficient for any reasonable man's own use.  He had said he never gave
stimulants to his people except medicinally.  The ammunition bills were
all right, too.  He showed me his shot-gun and a heavy revolver.
Ammunition figuring in his accounts (and they ran back fifteen years or
more) suited their calibres.  On the documentary evidence we could give
Mr. Gentil a clean discharge, and I told him as much.  He showed no
sign of any relief.  My mission did not appear to have concerned him
overmuch.

"I have broken no law," said he.  "Why, then, should any officer of
government be unwelcome here? ... Perhaps ... perhaps, indeed, you may
help us."

I thought then of what he had said when he came to the door: they were
sadly upset over something.  No one about the place.  No dogs either.
I had thought best to ask no questions and he had volunteered nothing
more.  I recalled, too, his abstractions, his obvious anxiety, his
questioning of the servant.

"I'll be glad to do anything I can," I told him, "if you'll let me know
what's up?"

He had been pacing the floor.  He stopped short.  His face darkened,
passionately vindictive.

"We have lost one of our children here," he said with strange
intensity.  "A baboon stole her.  They can get no trace."

He paused an instant.  "Baboons," he went on, cold hate in his voice,
"baboons are fiends.  I would that I could kill every one of them!"

I sat up a bit at that.  I'd never had it in for the baboons
especially.  Thought they were rummy little chaps, the babies in
particular, all pink and hairless and not in the least afraid.  Always
used to duck the baboon hunts myself, when we went out before the dawn
with kaffir spotters to try to catch them asleep in the rocky kloofs
and caves.  That job seemed a shade too close to murder, even at
two-and-six a tail bounty money.  Of course, they're rough on the crops
at times and do a bit of mischief, travelling as they do sometimes in
troops of thousands....  And I heard they would carry off children
every chance they got.

"The baboon is a raider, a farm wrecker, a coward, a thief, a
murderer"; Gentil bit off each word.  "I have seen a couple of big ones
literally tear a pointer dog to pieces with their hands and teeth.
Many ewes have I lost through them ripping out their udders to drink
the milk.  They never let a man with a gun get within range of them,
but they fear no woman.  They will attack women every time....  And the
babies----"

Again he stopped abruptly.  His manner and expression altered.  Once
more he was the considerate host.

"But all that will keep until morning," he remarked apologetically.
"We are organizing a wider search.  You may perchance give us
counsel....  First, a good sleep, though.  Shall I show you your room?
May I offer you a drink before you retire?"

He led the way to a cool sleeping chamber, waving introduction to it
from the doorway.  As he handed me my lamp and bade me good night he
added:

"This was, I think, a pet baboon....  The babe was just six months old."

      *      *      *      *      *

I should have slept like a log.  I was very tired.  The bed was the
best I'd been in for months.  It was pleasantly cool, with no vexing
flies or mosquitoes.  Yet I tossed and turned and twisted.  Reaction, I
suppose.  It had been an exciting day.  Tried shutting my eyes and
counting.  That nymph of the mountain danced before me and I couldn't
get up to ten.  Started puzzling and speculating all over till my brain
was numb....  Next it would be old Gentil--and baboons--and babies.  I
would just begin to doze off and some simple farmyard noise would bring
me wide awake again like a shot.  The night seemed alive with petty
irritations, ghostly comings and goings, whisperings and tiptoeings.
Must have been nearly daylight when I did manage to drop off.

Of course then I had to dream--all sorts of topsy-turvy nonsense:
Gentil with his great beard and his long arms, turned into a baboon,
with hundreds more of them chasing my beauty of the pool--only she had
changed, too, into the pinkest kind of baby, her golden hair swathing
her in gossamer.  She was running, lightly and soundlessly, along that
spiderweb trail....  Couldn't see them after her!  I tried to call out
and warn her, but the right word wouldn't come and my throat choked up
so I couldn't let a peep out of me.  When she tripped and fell--it was
one of those yellow lilies reaching up its long stems and clinging to
her little feet--the pack barked exultantly and closed in on her, and I
came out of it in a cold sweat, my feet on the floor....

Then I heard Gentil's voice, very low.  It seemed to come from the
stoep.  Slipping to the window, I made out two shadowy shapes there in
the thin light of the false dawn.  I listened.  It was Gentil, a
dwarfish native with him, hunched up in the shadow.  The old man was
clicking away in some outlandish dialect new to me, his voice not much
more than a whisper, tense and troubled.  He stopped, and the other
clicked something back.  It was a woman's voice, old and croaky.  She
didn't bother to whisper, and it struck me she talked a bit too free
for a kaffir to a white man.  He clapped a hand on her mouth and I
could hear his "Hus-s-sh!"  That's a word that's plain enough in all
languages.  There was more palaver and the clink of silver pieces.  The
old one was on her feet, bent almost double.  He gave her something.  I
could see that much, for the light was brightening fast.  The hag
slipped away and he stepped inside.  The floor creaked as he trod
carefully, barefoot.

No more sleep for me.  It was time I got up, anyway.  Ordinarily I
should have theorized to beat the band over that daybreak confab, but
things had been coming so thick and fast I didn't think much about it.
It was broad daylight when I washed and dressed and the boy had brought
my coffee--another glorious morning.  The peaks of the range showed all
ivory touched with the faintest pink melting into coral, and that
shading off into flaming scarlet.  A refreshing breeze carried the
half-forgotten fragrance of roses.  Cows lowed contentedly, waiting to
be milked.  A horse snickered in some distant field, and I thought of
Jean.  A young cock crowed shrilly, challenging the waking world.
Birds chirped.  Somewhere overhead a dove cooed.  And, very far away, a
baboon's harsh bark woke faint echoes....

That reminded me.  I found my host in the living-room (I don't think he
had been to bed) and he greeted me courteously.  Had I slept well?  Was
it not a fine morning?  Was I ready for breakfast?

I asked, of course, about the missing child.  It had not been found,
but they had hope--he flushed unaccountably and gave breakfast orders,
switching the conversation adroitly.  Would I be interested in his
experiments in seeking a cure for the horse-sickness?

If any subject holds interest for a white man in Africa, where a horse
is his constant companion, it is this.  I listened eagerly while he
elaborated his theory, my coffee getting cold.  We had always been told
this terrible scourge was somehow traceable to the dew.  Orders were
strict against letting our beasts graze in the lowlands while it lay on
the grass.

Gentil scouted the dew idea.  He was bold enough, in this at least, to
oppose the accepted dictum.  Sheep minds make the majorities
everywhere.  Once mounted on his hobby, he rode it gallantly.  Far from
impracticable, too, for the man who discovers a horse-sickness cure can
have about anything he asks in Africa.  Comes from a germ, he held.
Identify and isolate that germ, then kill its potentialities for
mischief by inoculation.  Donkeys admittedly are immune.  Mules already
have been inoculated successfully.

"Simply a matter of progressive experimentation," he claimed, pointing
proudly to his own horses as living witnesses.  They were turned out on
the flat nightly to pasture.  Had I seen better?  I had not.

"Too soon it is yet with positiveness to speak," said he, the lapse in
idiom betraying his eagerness; "but before so long I think I shall show
you a treatment by which any horse safely can be salted."[2]


[2] Cured, and therefore immune from any recurrence of the malady.


"If you do," I agreed, almost as enthusiastic as he was, "my
congratulations in advance, for your fortune's made."

He stopped, peering at me as if confused by a new and not wholly
welcome thought.

"That I had not considered," he hesitantly admitted....  "You are
probably right.  Yet I do not want wealth.  It means prominence.  I
desire but peace.  To save the horses was all I had thought of.  Always
have I loved horses."

There we were on common ground.

Abruptly as he had dismissed the matter of the stolen child, he himself
returned to it.  The father had been of his household not more than two
or three years, a useful and faithful man.  The mother had been with
him from her childhood.  This was their first-born.

"It hits them hard," he said sadly.  "He loved the small one almost as
though she had been a son."

I asked what new steps he had taken.  He did not answer.  Thinking he
had perhaps not understood, I asked again.  He stood up and faced me.

"Last night I said I had broken no law, and I then spoke truth," he
declared contritely.  "This morning you have lawful right to arrest me.
Oh no"--he seemed to read my thoughts--"nothing of which you spoke....
Early this morning I sent for a witch-doctress my people both trust and
greatly fear.  To them she is all but omnipotent.  I sought her aid.  I
did this knowing the law forbids.  We ourselves had done all we could,
and to no avail.  I had seen the poor mother grieve....  I sent for
this ancient woman and I doubled her fee.  It was--what is it your
sportsmen say?--it was playing the long shot.  If the babe is found I
am very glad.  If not, I have done my best and what they so much
desired done; and thereby I have opened to them my heart.  It has given
them comfort--and new hope.  The penalty I will pay!"

The man was a bundle of contradictions.  He had begun his confession
like a culprit schoolboy.  He ended it with dignity.  From his
standpoint I should not have cared to say he hadn't done the right
thing at that.  It wasn't anything unprecedented, either, law or no
law.  We frequently heard of Boer farmers--English, too--consulting the
witch-doctors about lost stock.  Yes, and they often got them back.  I
had no violently virtuous urge to make trouble for him, and I'll admit
I was curious myself to see what would happen.  So I looked him in the
eyes and shook my head.

"Nix understand," I told him.  "Never mind, though.  We'll let it go."

He seemed for a second bewildered.  Then he gave me a whimsical smile,
but spoke not another word.  I should have liked awf'ly well to have
had a chin with him about these witch-doctors and doctresses, but I'd
made that tabu.  It was my turn to change the subject, so I inquired
about his neighbours.  Naturally he hadn't any within two or three
days' riding, but it got the ball rolling the way I wanted.  He had
not, he said (and I could see he was quite sincere), seen or heard of
any white women in Sankaeliland since his own wife died.  I didn't tell
him even then of the girl of the pool.  Perhaps I should have....  I
don't care to look silly....  Then he went out to see the horses and he
showed me about his place.  There was reason for his pride in it.  I
have not seen many such farms, or more contented, willing people.

Strolling about with him, I was several times on the point of speaking
of my adventures of yesterday.  Something each time intervened.  He was
much preoccupied.  The trivial tragedy of his small domain seemingly
weighed over-heavily with him.  One naturally sympathizes with one's
people in their troubles.  It seemed to me he rather overdid it.  I had
determined to say nothing of my maid of the mountain, but I constantly
expected him to ask me how I had come to be there without my horse.
Until he asked, I meant to keep a still tongue.  Knowledge of secret
trails gains in police value when shared with few.

But he did not concern himself as to how I had come, merely asking if
my mare would be all right, and perfunctorily offering to send one of
his boys for her.  We were crossing his farthest meadow, the one by
which I had entered the stead, when he stopped to swing a long arm
comprehensively towards the cliffs.

"A strange bit of country that, geologically and--otherwise," he
remarked conversationally.  "You see something of it from
here--basaltic and granitic rocks, with occasional limestone intrusion.
Yet in the season of the rains the surcharged spruits carry heavy blue
clay.  Scientifically paradoxical, is it not?"

Not being a rock-hound, I couldn't say.  He went on:

"Often I thought, in the earlier days when first I had come hither,
that I should like to explore it somewhat.  But I never did.  And now I
shun it and am almost as suspicious of it as are my people.  To them it
is forbidden country--the dwelling-place of spirits.  I have heard it
said that in ages past the Little People abode there, and that their
paintings and carvings remain....  Thence has come every sorrow I have
known in this place of peace.  It was there yestermorn the baboon went
also.  Nor would even the father follow--not to save his child!"

We stood a moment, scanning the lofty steeps, turning then to retrace
our steps.  To our amazement (mine, at least, for he seemed immune to
surprises), a wrinkled creature of unguessable age squatted almost at
our feet.  Such a travesty of humankind I had never seen before.  Not
four feet tall, if she had stood erect; bent and crouching, she was a
mere horrible pigmy.  Her skin wasn't black, like that of the
countryside folk, but greenish-yellow, hanging in loose, flapping,
over-dry folds.  Repulsively reptilian, she moved, despite her years,
silently and swiftly; and coiled about her scrawny throat was a
puff-adder, somnolent.  The bag slung underneath her arm proclaimed her
of the sorceress's cult.  I guessed her for the witch Gentil had been
whispering with in the grey dawn.

And yet it was not to him, but to me, her sunken hawk-eyes turned,
boring into mine, searching long.  I did not fancy it.  The creature
was uncanny.  Gentil spoke to her as to an equal, almost with
deference.  And that is not well in Africa.  What he said I do not
know.  It was an uncouth tongue.  I assumed they talked of the missing
child; but when he turned to me, clearly at the witch's behest, it was
to ask of my country, the place from which I had come to Africa, my
family, my own inchoate affairs and shadowy prospects.  And I submitted
to the ridiculous catechising!  My host asked it as a personal favour.
That over, the crone gave him a muttered message and his melancholy
seemed to drop from him like a garment.  Smiling, he interpreted.

"The child is safe, she says.  We shall have it back to-day."

He turned to the beldame.  One skinny hand reached up, and the snake
about her neck forsook its resting-place, slipping down along her
withered arm.  I stepped back hastily, whereat she cackled hoarsely,
instantly adding words as he quickly translated.

"She says to have no fear.  It is but her companion, working harm to
none that seek not to molest her or the one she serves."

"The snake-god?" I questioned, curious.  Much vagrant chatter of snake
deities and snake ghosts circulates in those parts.

"Possibly," he replied; "I cannot say.  The child we yesterday lost----"

A running rattle of stones sliding down the hillside caused us to look
thither.  It was but a glance, but when we turned to further question
her, the woman was gone.

"They come; they go," said he, meeting my look.  "One does not live
long years in these parts to chase the tail of mysteries."

As the old woman evidently had directed, he led to where the most
densely bushed of three deep kloofs debouched in a thick clump of thorn
at the valley's edge.  Excitement loosed his laggard tongue.  To my
thinking he talked a shade wildly.  I began to wonder if the lonely
years had not touched his head.

"To one who has always lived the white life it may seem mad," he
declared defensively; "but my people say (and if She speaks truth I
shall not deny it) that these remaining few of the ancient Bushfolk
hold speech with the baboons.  This doctress has Bushman blood.  That
the baboons serve the Little People is so fixed a thought with
Sankaeli's folk, I was minded to put it to the test....  The woman said
the baboon would bring back the babe to-day!"

The words had but passed his lips when a boy came running, naked save
for his moocha, sweat shining, for he came swiftly.

"Baas!" he gasped.  It was all he had breath for.  He pointed to the
edge of the farm where the cliffs fall steeply to wall it in, an area
lightly bushed, but with three towering blue gums dwarfing the
indigenous trees as trespassing poplars in an apple orchard.  We
quickened our steps, breaking into a run as excited chattering reached
us, like the hum of swarming bees.  The runner had recovered his wind
and romped alongside, erupting explanations.  The child had been
discovered--or, rather, the baboon had brought it back.  A herd boy had
been first to see them, the baboon (a full-grown female) carrying her
little human doll with evident care, even shielding it from the thorn
bushes as they passed through.  The alarm had been sounded and the huts
had emptied at once; women and boys deserted their fields and flocks
and came flying, weariness of the long search forgotten, the father in
the lead, a heavy assegai in his hand.  His face was lighted with the
lust for vengeance.

No wonder panic had seized the baboon, but not all for herself.
Protective instinct at least akin to maternal forbade her to desert the
child.  She had tucked it under her arm and carried it in her rush for
safety and shelter to the topmost branches of the tallest gum.  There
she was cuddling it (we could hear it weakly whimpering), alternately
seeking to soothe it and peering down through the leafy tangle to
chatter and show her teeth.

What could the people do?  To attempt to climb the tree would be
childish.  The baboon would only scurry to another vantage point,
taking the baby with her; or she might drop it, to herself escape.
Monkey-minded, she might, too, at any minute lose interest in her
child-toy and cast it from her, obedient to some new small-brain
motivation.  The father, over-strained and impatient, began to climb.
The mother sought with sense to hold him.

"No, not that!" Gentil called sharply.  "Let the tree alone....  Would
you have the child killed, fool?"

His people turned to him with relief.  It was the white man's place to
think and command.  On him was responsibility, in this case of life or
death.  I thought his first move sound.  It was to send all save the
father and mother flying to their quarters and to the house for
blankets, mats, bucksails,[3] anything that could be improvised as a
net to hold beneath the tree.  Reprieved from molestation, the baboon
glared less balefully and comforted her small captive.  The baby ceased
to cry.


[3] Tarpaulins.


It was then I recalled a somewhat like experience a trooper pal named
Verey had once told me of.  His strategy might work again.  I whispered
it to Gentil.

"Worth trying," he thought.  "I have no better plan."

All tame baboons are inordinately fond of beer.  They surmised this was
a pet.  Show a beer-bottle to any such, and it is like holding out
candy or an ice-cream cone to the average youngster.  A beer-bottle was
brought.  It was the wretched mother's task to attract the baboon's
attention and tempt her down if possible.  We others drew back, keeping
very still, a blanket or bucksail to each pair of us.  We would do our
best to catch if the small one came tumbling through the branches.

"God grant she does not drop it now," the old man muttered huskily.

But she did not.  We could see her cock her head to one side, peering
curiously down and passing the tot, now seemingly sleeping, to her
other arm.  Then she swung and dropped lightly to a lower limb, eyes
glued on the bottle.  The mother had set it down at the foot of the
tree and backed quietly away.  Our hearts stood still.  I stole a
glance at the mother, squatting in front of me.  Her black shoulders
quivered, otherwise she gave no sign of the torment tearing her.  That
woman had pluck.

Peeking--peering--questioning--advancing--retreating--falling
plummet-like in a way to send our hearts into our throats--stopping to
scratch herself or to fondle the babe--but, little by little, coming
down nearer and nearer, greedy and inquisitive both, it was all of five
minutes before that baboon let go the lowest branch and zigzagged down
the bare trunk, gripping the bark--still holding to the child....  And
the mother crouched there waiting--very, very still--watching with her
heart in her eyes.  Nerve, what?  If they seemed weeks to us, those few
minutes must have been years to that kaffir girl.

I suppose we did let out one big sigh of relief when it dropped to the
ground--couldn't help it; and that was enough for the baboon.  She was
just reaching for the bottle when she caught sight of us, and, quick as
a flash, she'd grabbed the tree again, still clutching the baby.  She
wasn't quick enough, though.  A heavy revolver barked at my
ear--Gentil's.  The mother jumped for it like a duiker,[4] and her man
was almost as quick as she was, his assegai in his hand, blood-hunger
in his eyes....  And the baboon hugged the baby tight, still protecting
it while her own eyes glazed, till they stabbed the last life out of
her....  Funny thing, the careful way it had held the mite all the
time.  Their own babies grab and cling to them with all four hands from
the day they're born!


[4] A small antelope which, when startled, disappears in the scrub in a
succession of leaps and bounds.


Things happened fast after that.  The baboon had let out one last wild
bark, and almost instantly it seemed to be answered in a human voice!
The voice came nearer--clearer--questioning in tone.  I turned to
stare, dumbfounded, and I saw Her break through the thorn hedge and
come running, so light-footed and fluidly she seemed to float--my
Golden Girl of the pool!

The others weren't looking.  They were crowding around the mother where
she sat rocking on her heels, squeezing the baby to her.  Her man was
kicking and stabbing at the dead baboon, Gentil beside him, his
revolver in his hand.  She must have sensed in a flash all that had
happened, for as the old man wheeled to see what was up, her little
assegai whistled through the air and took him fair in the throat.  He
had had time to drop her before she threw, but his gun hand never came
up.  He just jerked forward and stared, eyes popping out of his head.
And the assegai struck him and he went down!

I ran to him--alone.  His people were racing for their huts as if the
devil were after them.  And they were all yelling like mad:

"_The White Witch!  The White Witch of the Little People!_"




CHAPTER III

LOVE'S DAWN AND THE ANCIENT WAY

Did I say I was left alone with him?  I didn't mean quite that.  His
people had all stampeded like frightened sheep, but the girl--my Golden
Girl--she stayed.  When he had slumped down, clutching at his torn
throat, she had given just one frightened sob.  Nothing of the native
about that!  But before I could get in action she had plucked out the
assegai, and one of her little hands was holding the wound together
while the other found his handkerchief and held it out to me.  I
managed a sort of bandage--one couldn't mistake what she wanted--and
she took mine as well.  Went right to work, deft as a doctor or a
hospital nurse.  I'd taken first aid and I knew.  Just like a woman,
eh?  Do the big damage and then turn right round and undo it as best
they can!

It looked pretty bad, too.  He was losing a lot of blood.  The assegai
(luckily it was clean) had barely missed the jugular, but a thin
whistling sound showed the windpipe had got it.  He must have suffered
a lot, but you'd never have guessed it.  Gritty beggar!

We got him on his pins and he managed to make the house, leaning on
both of us.  Kept looking at her all the while, mystified like.  Didn't
seem to remember she had done him in--not a sign of anger or reproach.
Just that vague, perplexed look on his face.  Made me think perhaps the
shock had quite unsettled his mind.  The girl acted strangely, too.
She had been mad enough to stick him like a pig--meant to do for him
properly, no doubt of that--but as soon as he dropped she had let out
that one sobbing sort of gasp and was on the job, trying to fix him up.
Had a blanket folded and under his head while I was getting my wits
together.  And all the time we were working with him she kept peering
into his face, puzzling over something, it looked like.  No tears,
though--no hysterics--strictly businesslike.

Even when we'd got him into the house and his bed not one of his own
people would come near him, though I called 'em and cussed 'em proper.
Wouldn't move hand or foot.  Kept close to their huts, jabbering a lot
of nonsense.  We could catch "Baas" and "Baba" and "White Witch" now
and then, but I couldn't make any sense of their chatter....  The girl
only jibbed once, when we came to the door.  You'd have thought she
fancied the house some sort of trap.

The bleeding eased up when we got him laid out flat and the wound
cleansed with some peroxide I'd seen in his bathroom.  Bandaged his
neck tight as we dared and not choke him.  I had handed her the basin
and she'd gone for more water when he signed for me to come close.  His
eyes met and held mine while his hand came up, making motions of
writing.  I fished out my notebook and pencil.  It was what he wanted.
He scrawled a few words--wasn't such an easy trick, the way he was
then.  Then he passed me the book to read, watching me close.  It took
some making out, and at that I didn't quite understand:


"... Always before leaping, look....  No dokktor....  Not detain
her....  _Accident_....  My fault....  In God's name _say nothing about
her_."


His eyes never left my face while I puzzled it out.  Seemed somehow
that more than gallantry was prompting him, something altogether beyond
me....  It wouldn't do to excite him I knew, so I nodded.  He patted my
hand.  Then he gave me a wan smile, but contented like, and relaxed.  I
couldn't tell whether he'd dropped off unconscious or slept.

Ten or fifteen minutes slipped by, and the girl hadn't returned.  I
stepped to the door to see what had become of her and almost bumped
into the kaffir table-boy sneaking in, the rest of the house servants
at his heels.  Sure enough panicky they all were.  Couldn't get much
out of them, but, putting two and two together, the White Witch had
bolted for the hills.  Looked nasty for me.  A trooper on the spot,
seeing a white man about done in, and then palling round with the
bloodthirsty witch-woman and letting her give him the slip!  One thing
sure, though: the old gentleman would stand by if there was any shindy
about it--and the natives wouldn't talk.  Too precious scared to.

In any case my first business was to get back to the mare and rush a
doctor to look Gentil over.  That part of my promise rested lightly.  I
couldn't take a chance with the man's life.  Another look round and I'd
trek.  The patient slept.  Tearing a leaf from my notebook, I scribbled
a line to let him know I'd be back within a day or two and tiptoed out.
I'd a good bit of daylight left if I moved lively--should be on the
main track by sundown.  Trust Jean to do the rest.

Where the kloof breaks into the lowland, almost where Gentil had stood
spouting geology and anthropology, I began casting about for my tiny
trail.  I knew it began somewhere thereabouts and felt sure I'd strike
it if I worked the ground thoroughly.  Still, it wasn't so easy to pick
up.  I was beginning to doubt if I had my right bearings, when I was
brought about-face by a croak behind me.  It was the old witch-doctress
again, but without her pet, the puff-adder.  At that she was none too
welcome.  I had no time to waste.  Likely she guessed as much, for she
beckoned to me to follow and turned sharp left and marched.  I don't
quite know why I did, but I trailed along.  A stiff pace she set,
little and old as she was.  And she did put me on the path all right,
and quite a bit higher up than where I had come into the farm from it.
It hadn't taken ten minutes, and I couldn't have made as much ground
inside half an hour.  Of course she was looking for bonsela![1]  I
tossed her a tickie.[2]


[1] A small gift.

[2] Threepenny piece, then South Africa's smallest coin.


Instead of catching, or trying to, she let it go by her, grinning
toothlessly.  Her claw-like hand dipped into that bag of hers and came
out with an English half-sovereign or my eyes lied.  She sent it flying
after my threepenny-bit!

Surprised?  Was I?  I stood there goggle-eyed, while she came closer;
and--funny, isn't it, how a little thing like that will strike you?--I
noticed there wasn't any of that sour milk smell of the black to her.
They say the Little People are like that.  Maybe that's how they make
such friends of the jungle-folk?  Animals can't smell them as they do
the kaffirs?

She brought up a pace or two from me, bending over about double to
touch my boot with her skinny hand.  Then, straightening up almost to
her scant four feet, she lifted her withered arm upraised over her head
in salute.

"_N'koos, Baba!_"

She was my most obedient servant--my very humble slave--my loyal and
devoted friend!  It amounted to about that.  I'd never have picked her
for a servant--no, nor yearned for her as a friend.  But--never look a
gift slave in the mouth, eh?  I waited for her next move.  It wasn't
long.  She wanted to know how the Baas was.  Who was caring for him?
Was I going to bring the policemen to make trouble for her people?

There was a whole lot of difference in the way she had talked with
Gentil and the way she spoke to me.  It was black slave to white
chief--and a mighty humble little black.  And she spoke a kaffir lingo
I was pretty nifty at, so I could get every word, which was more than I
usually could.

I told her I would send a doctor--the rest could wait.  We'd see how he
came along.  Friend of hers, wasn't he?

Plainly he was not.  She spluttered and frothed and cursed like a
wizened fiend--anyway, it sounded like cursing.  I gathered generally
that she'd have much pleasure personally in pushing the old chap round
a stake.  The dried-up mite of misery almost said as much.

But not her wish or her will counted, she insisted.  The Baas was to be
made whole speedily.  She obeyed.  It was the White Chieftainess's
command.  Should he die, blood would be on the White Chieftainess.  Did
I want it so?

Crafty old vixen!  Of course I wasn't anxious as all that to make a big
case for myself.  I didn't want the old farmer to die.  She knew that
well enough, too, and pushed on with her tale.

She had been sent to care for the Baas.  Great skill had she, much
knowledge of hurts and wounds and herbs and secret potions.  She would
nurse him as flesh of her flesh--and pretty dried up old flesh it was,
I thought....  The White Chieftainess sent further word, and this to
me: that if I gave not my promise thus to let matters run, she would
cast herself from the kranz where the reim hung!

Everybody seemed to be wanting promises from me!  ... Well, you
know--naturally I didn't want the girl to do a silly thing like that.
I told the old body to trot along.  If the Baas was as much better as
she promised, when I got back in a day or two--why, we might leave it
for him to say what he wanted done.  With that she kow-towed again and
was on her way.

      *      *      *      *      *

Of my scrambling journey back to the pool of the lilies and the lily
maid I need say little.  To me it is ever easier to go up than down.
Moreover, the difficulties of the way appeared less formidable.  Had I
not known it could not be so, I should have said some of the more
dangerous passages had been made almost safe since last I had traversed
them, not forty-eight hours before.  There, where the ooze had
slithered under my feet, were stepping-stones of a sort--strange I had
not noted them!  At the spot where I had feared falling to frightful
death, the grassroots proving fickle, was lashed a sapling handrail;
blind must I have been before!  And certain of the tree-trunks bridging
the narrow gorges assuredly seemed more sound, with the look of being
new-placed since I had passed over them, descending to the stead!

Yet there were no footprints along that dizzy stairway of the
cliffs--no sign of life since the days of the long ago, save for the
cooing rock-doves that made the steep walls their airy habitation, and
very many baboons, in endless succession, clinging to rock perches
above or beside the trail or watching from the tops of stunted trees,
at such spaced intervals that almost they seemed posted there as
sentinels.

At length I came, with much less toil and time loss than I had counted
to spend, to where, by the reim, I had dropped past the overhanging
scarp to footing upon the path.  The reim still dangled there, securely
fast above.  Here the trail ended in a blank face of basalt.  Above,
the roofing rock projected a full four feet.  The tiny ledge marking
the trail's beginning was less than six feet long and scarcely half
that in its width.  And where the reim hung loosely in air was naught
but a sweeping vista of the secret valley, the cliff precipitous in its
swift descent.

Who first had trod that path, doubtless following some hazardous
buck-track in the forgotten years?  Who so laboriously contrived those
crude bridges, hung perilously in space to lash those sapling handrails
for other hands to grasp?  Most mystifying of all, how had they guessed
existence of that overhead fairy bower, alike invisible from below or
above?  And how, to win to it, negotiated that impassable cornice to
reach the mimosa root and fix the reim that now afforded tangible if
spidery means of access?

I gave it up.  The human brain has its limitations, as have human hands
and feet.  I scrambled hastily skyward to the nook of the pool and the
waterfall, to find it sweetly unchanged.  The yellow arum lilies still
nodded approvingly to their counterparts in the crystal deeps.  The
chirpy cascade trilled its small tinkling song.  The vagrom breeze
caressed the mimosa bloom.  No one was in the nook.  Vague
disappointment stirred me.  I scarce had looked for such a miracle, yet
still I had dared to hope that She might be there.

Some small trouble I had reaching my banyan branch by which to make
back to where I had left the mare.  The trick was turned, however, and
I cast a farewell glance over my shoulder to that sylvan eyrie, midway
between valley and sky.  I had proven it quite deserted scant seconds
before.  _Yet there She was again_--my Golden Girl, almost as I first
had seen her!

Again she stood in the limpid pool, so close to the chattering fall
that its spray made for her a misty veil.  Her necklace, bracelets and
girdle gleamed like sapphires; her spun-gold hair was lightly dusted
with turquoise blue.  In her hand was another cruel light assegai.  Her
costume was made complete by that same curious moocha or sporran, of a
skin wholly alien to Africa, as far as I knew its fauna.  And yet she
was regally clad--gowned as no earthly princess ever was, in the
iridescent hues of the mountain rainbow.

She stood regarding me with tragic eyes and I went down to her.  Nor
did she this time retreat or lift her trim assegai.  Indeed, she
advanced to meet me, proud paced and head held high, her gaze never
leaving mine.  No answer gave she to my greeting, but took a nearer
step.  Her lip was trembling though her eyes were brave.  She held out
to me her weapon and I took it, uncomprehending.  Then both her small
hands were outstretched, while tears lurked just behind the barriers of
her long lashes.  Still was I mystified until, fearful and hesitantly,
she touched the handcuffs hung at my belt--recalling me to my duty!

Duty it plainly was then and there to arrest her.  No shadow of doubt
intruded.  My own eyes had witnessed her assault on the old
man--assault with a deadly weapon and indisputable (if unpremeditated),
intent to kill.  My trooper's oath, the honour of the Force, dictated
one course only.  Yet that way, perversely, my feet refused to take....
If I had only taken it!  The fates prescribe their heaviest punishments
for recreants to trust.

I simply could not do it.  I could not even think of her as a prisoner
haled to the bar of justice--gaped at by lecherous crowds--committed to
some vile prison, to herd with verminous malefactors, pariahs of her
sex, cut-throat kaffirs, perchance even unspeakable Chinese!  My mind
and heart revolted at the thought.  Indignant, I shook my head.

We faced each other thus: a forsworn man--a dangerous criminal in the
stern view of the Law, yet a glowing, a golden girl!  Shame should have
suffocated, yet I felt no shame, a heady exaltation on the contrary....
And She?  She knew--ah, yes, She knew.  Knew without the stumbling
words wherewith I sought to justify my treason and compromise with
conscience.  Forthwith She understood.  A woman's intuition is as a
lightning flash.  Two pearly tears were dashed away by an impetuous
hand.  That little hand swept in a swift arc downward until it touched
my foot.  Quick then as thought it was held upright above the golden
head.

"_N'koos, Baba!_"

She also was mine to command!  And I--I was minded then and there to
crush her to my heart....  Poor, callow fool, I did not know it
then--it was the birth of our love....  I only knew how much I felt for
her.  The gods were whispering, to comfort, cherish, shield.  At
confluence were the currents of our two lives.  Lip language was
unneeded, futile and empty sound-waste when souls thus touch and merge.
Silent we stood a space, eyes meeting eyes and mutely eloquent.  A
shaft of shadow moved across the kranz.  Day waned.  The spell was
broken by the urge of haste.  I sought for words.  Somehow they must
have come to me, for she demurely signified her comprehension and
agreement.  I must hasten to the Post while yet light served, I told
her.  By the third sun at longest I should return.  And She would meet
me then where now we stood? ... Ah, yes, I knew She would!

It seemed but a moment later when Jean whinnied eager welcome, coming
to me delightedly--a moment only, for Time had sprouted wings.

The mare, to my amaze, had been but lately cared for.  Her glossy coat
betokened an industrious brush, and there were fragments of green
mealies strewing the turf, abundant sign that she had feasted well.  I
saddled quickly and we slipped down the trail.  Who thus had cared for
her I could not surmise.  And yet, as we covered swiftly the few
leagues to the Post, in the soft radiance of the gathering night of
sensuous Transvaal springtime, I scarce gave it passing thought.  My
brain was very busy none the less--yet it was in a whirl.

      *      *      *      *      *

Everything was O.K. at the Post.  The home mail came in next morning,
and, so far as Morton was concerned, the Transvaal could go to pot till
he had caught up on the Cup Tie matches.  The corporal finished his
out-reports while the runner waited.

"Anything in that Gentil business?" he had asked at breakfast.

"False alarm," I told him, and he gave a satisfied grunt.  I added that
the man was laid up with a bad cut in his neck--accident, he'd said.
I'd promised to call on him again in a day or two.  Nothing like being
truthful and keeping promises, circumstances permitting!

Morton took a turn at patrol while the corporal read the papers and I
dug into a kaffir phrase-book.  You never can tell when the lingo may
come in handy.  Stuck to it next day, too, till they wanted to know
what exam. I was loading up for....  Somehow I forgot to mention the
_poort_[3] I'd found in Sankaeli's Wall.  And no one had to suggest an
early start when I took the road again to see how the old man was
coming along.  No use getting the blacks talking by using that secret
trail, I thought.  So I had the long, hot ride round.  It was late
afternoon when I made the stead and an _umfaan_[4] ran out to take the
mare.  "Baas better," he said in response to a first question.  I asked
if the White Witch had come back, and he closed up like a clam.
"_Ikona,_"[5] seemed about the only other word he knew.


[3] Passageway; gate.

[4] Kaffirboy.

[5] "Don't understand."


Gentil was better--a lot.  Apart from his neck being tied up and not
being able to talk, he looked right enough.  The old witch-doctress
wasn't about.  She would be back, I gathered, to fix him for the night.
After a wash-up and dinner we sat on the stoep and talked--that is, I
talked.  Didn't want to bother him with too much writing, but I did ask
him if he'd seen the white girl again, and passed him my notebook and
pencil.  He seemed reluctant, but finally scrawled an answer in just
six words: "I know of no white girl."

Couldn't get him to touch the pencil again--made out writing bothered
him.  I was trying to figure out what had come over him when the old
witch materialized, soundless as a snake.  First I knew she was there
was when she croaked out to him to go indoors.  A bit thick that, from
a tramp native to the boss of the place!  I was going to give her
what-for, but she touched her lips with a bony finger and whispered
something I took for "to-night."  Kept staring as if she'd look clean
through me and clicking away at a great rate.  Was not the Baas much
better?  Had she not kept her word?  What more could a doctor have done?

I couldn't see much of anything, but I didn't tell her so.  She had
made a neat job of his throat.  Not a surgeon in the district could
have bettered it.  Wound sewn up with a bird-bone needle and some
native stuff so fine you could scarcely see the stitches.  Windpipe
patched, too.  Good as ever he'd be in a few weeks.  Witch or no witch,
she was a dandy doctress.

She was fixing him for the night when I asked her what had become of
the white girl.  She jumped like a shot and then caught herself up,
finished her bandaging, and gave him a sleeping-dose.  As she slipped
out, she motioned me to follow.  I did, in a second or two.  The stoep
was deserted, but her voice came to me in a whisper:

"At the place of the pictures--when the moon walks!"

Making a date with me, the old bag-o'-bones!  I started to laugh.  Then
it struck me: Would the old scarecrow meet me there--or someone else?
Wasn't any doubt where she meant--that old gallery with the Bushman
paintings.  Not a nice place to go mooching round at night!  I had my
flashlight and my revolver, though--and curiosity.  I decided to think
it over.  But I knew I'd go.  The moon, I remembered, would be up about
ten.

Gentil fidgeted when I went in.  Wanted to know where I'd been.  I told
him I'd just stepped outside for a breath of air, and he grabbed the
pencil again and scribbled:

"See anyone?"

As a matter of fact I hadn't--only heard.  I shook my head.  That
seemed to satisfy him, and I said good-night.

"Hard ride to-day," I told him.  "Pretty tired.  Think I'll turn in."

I didn't, though.  Stood looking out of the window to the black outline
of the range and the velvet sky, almost level with the peaks, sprinkled
with stars like diamonds.  The perfumes of the night flooded the balmy
air--roses and honeysuckle, mimosa and peachbloom--Europe and Africa!
An owl hooted, high in the grove of gums.  From the herders' huts a
tomtom throbbed monotonously.  The moon peeped over the crest of the
high hills.  Mustn't let it show me to the kaffirs when I crossed the
stead, so I threw a leg over the sill and dropped to the ground.  By
the time the farm was bathed in fluid silver I was well under the
cliffs, my flash coming in handy to find the trail.  Once on it, I made
out all right.

Nothing happened until I stood in that ancient gallery, myriads of bats
wheeling overhead and only the hooting of that distant owl and the
measured drip of water somewhere along the cliff breaking the soothing
silence of the night....  There was no one there.  I began to wonder if
I had got the old hag right.  This surely was where she had meant?  My
watch said ten o'clock.  A new note suddenly intruded--a serpent's
sibilant hiss!  My flash swept a swift circle about my feet.

"Nay, have no fear"; assurance came from out of the darkness.  The
voice was that of the pigmy seeress, although I could not glimpse her.
"The snake of my house will harm thee not," she added hastily.  "I
thank my master for that he is here.  But well I knew thou wouldst
come."

"Where are you?" I asked sharply, annoyed and disappointed.  "What do
you want with me?  Make end of this nonsense!"

"Be not vexed with thy servant," she answered.  "Patience--a little
patience! ... The message of the White Chieftainess waits, and the
night ages.  Thou hast much to learn.  For here begins a new trail--for
thee new, yet old when to-day's world was young.  Enter then upon the
road of thy destiny, treading it without fear, since thou walkest in
favour of the ancient gods.  Happiness and power await thee--let but
thy faith be strong!"

The voice was no longer the cackling croak by which at first I had
recognized the crone.  Stronger now, more resonant, it rose in a chant,
echoing weirdly in that deserted place of many shadows.  I felt minded
almost to turn back, yet something held me--some strange compulsion
stronger than my own will.  I could not understand.

The voice seemingly had issued from the dark centre of the gallery,
where grew a mimosa bush, stunted but very thick, scenting the air with
its bloom.  On this I turned my light.

"That puny light thou needest not," the voice droned on, "for to thee,
first of living men, it is given to walk in the light of the wise ones
of the long past....  Follow, then!"

With the words, the mimosa was parted as a curtain by unseen hands,
revealing in a semi-phosphorescent glow that issued therefrom a
rough-hewn portal from which ran an ancient passage into the mountain's
heart.  In this rude gateway stood the withered seeress, wrapped in her
bones and snakeskins, a fur _kaross_[6] draped loosely across her
shoulder, the adder coiled tightly upon her thin wisps of hair, its
upraised head waving gently to and fro, its eyes agleam like jewels in
a fantastic head-dress such as Isis's priestesses were wont to wear.
The flooding light, now streaming from within, was richly amber, but of
no torch or lamp, an emanation, rather, from the walls themselves, and
in the witch's hand was a little wand, its tip likewise alive with this
redly-golden glow.


[6] A native cloak peculiar to South Africa; usually an oblong sort of
fur rug, unshaped.


"Touch not the walls," she cautioned.  "The light of wisdom is both
life and death!"

The radiant passageway ended abruptly in a lofty octagonal chamber,
hugely proportioned, the walls opalescent green, in jade-like panels
alternated with paintings finer and brighter than those of the outer
gallery.  Sun and weather had taken of these no toll.  In this grim yet
stately hall only the high ceiling exuded that golden light, so warmly
luminous as, like the sun, to dazzle; and the vast place was bare, save
at its very centre, where stood a massive chair wrought of dull bronze
or copper, on a great ebony block.

The paintings on these inner walls were deeply incised, so that the
pictured objects stood out in form as in colour, uncannily realistic.
Buck, koodoo, hartebeeste and giraffe were there, with other veldtland
creatures, and some now held by scholars to have been but mythical or
symbolic.  The colours were mainly black and white, rich reds and
golden yellow; and there were figures also of men and women--grotesque,
diminutive beings, armed with short, heavy bows and slender arrows of
reed.  All looked to be crowned with interlacing snakes--titular
deities possibly.  These pigmy humans were painted a greenish-yellow.
In this, it suddenly struck me, was close resemblance to the beldame
who had guided me thither; and all the pictured people had at least the
suggestion of tails, in the case of the females mere apron-like flaps
or folds.

Faintly outlined as background were trees and desert stretches,
white-crested hills and deep blue waters, the flora and vegetation
indisputably northern, quite foreign to Africa; and filling the central
panel, in pigment of royal blue, were triangles, circles, squares,
stars, and other geometrical figures, with markings that I, unversed in
antiquarian lore, took possibly for writings of some not altogether
barbaric race.  I was minded to try to puzzle out meanings from these
strange hieroglyphics.  An urging voice beside me checked my intent.

"The past is lived," it droned.  "The page of the future is blank.  The
present calls!"

Mechanically I followed her to that huge chair, whereon she signed that
I should seat myself, though this I would not do.  She squatted on her
heels, staring into the dust and mumbling.

"You had a message?" I reminded her.

"I have for thee two words," she answered, her eyes upon the ground.
Her voice once more had dropped to the sing-song chant of the dreamer.
"From Her I serve is one--she goes upon a journey.  She greets her lord
with this telling; and when her journey is made she keeps her tryst in
the hidden kloof where Tagelash[7] watches over the outlander's stead."


[7] A spirit of the still pools reputed to steal young women, yet treat
them kindly underneath the waters.


"When shall that be?" I asked, irritation I doubt not showing in my
tone.

"That I may not say," she answered.  "It was her time to go to the high
mountains, leaving maidenhood at their feet.  Her womanhood gained, she
hath her duty to the Little People.  To this end have the gods shaped
many destinies."

I hate to try to make sense of these native rigmaroles.

"Talk straight talk," I cried, "and tell where she has gone, and why.
When comes she back?  What does she ask of me?"

For once she replied directly.  The girl had gone on her pilgrimage,
with others of her years.  She would return when the "school" was over.
When this was, I should know, for the Princess desired me to meet her
then at the pool.  Meanwhile she besought my silence, lest harm befall
her.

I had heard something of these so-called pilgrimages and schools,
through which youths and maidens pass to manhood and womanhood in that
land.  Who in the Transvaal has not?  At a certain period in their
lives the young people are taken up to the peaks, a witch-doctor in
charge of the boys--a doctress with the girls.  No clothing is
permitted, nor contact with the veldtland world.  Exposure to cold and
storms is held to toughen the body.  Tasks likewise are set, to test
and develop courage, resourcefulness, patience, stoicism.  The girls
are instructed in crude domestic arts, the properties of curative, and
medicinal herbs and tonic potions, the tenets of their pagan beliefs.
No one may see either boys or girls during these schools of theirs.
Only the mothers may bring food for them, which they set down in
earthenware dishes at appointed places.  Should a child die under the
discipline, often severe, the mother's platter is broken.  No more is
ever known....  A patrol of ours once ran into one of these schools.
Our men were chased into Olifantsfontein, seventy miles.  Only good
horses saved them.  I myself have seen the novices from afar, moving
white specks upon the mountain top.

"I once saw such a pilgrimage from a great distance," I told the witch.
"Yet all therein seemed white?"

"The girls are painted white," she made reply.  "It long has been our
law, so that when the Fair Princess should come it would be a sign for
all."

She halted there, gazing fixedly at the dust.  I sought to break in
upon her brooding, but at a gesture forebore.

"And now the Princess hath come," she at length went on.  "She hath
come as was foretold--and thou also, n'Koos!  For thou as well as She
hath a place apportioned in the Great Plan toward the fulfilment of
which the seed was sown in forgotten time.  Think not it was by chance
thou camest into this alien land, for all things that be are ordered,
even from the beginning.  Not by chance either was it tossed from mouth
to mouth that this _schelm_[8] Gentil (she turned to spit upon the
hard-packed ground as she named the farmer) trafficked in forbidden
guns, as indeed he doth not, so that thou shouldst be borne hither on
the wings of Duty.  Nor was it chance that turned thee from the known
track, to follow the hidden path no other white foot hath trod--the
old, old way of the Little People these _Amaxosas_[9] account bewitched
and that led thee to the Chieftainess and her service----"


[8] Rascal.

[9] Kaffirs.


"Hold on there," I interrupted, annoyed and mystified.

"Is it not so?" she demanded.  "When she smote the man, didst thou not
suffer her to go, not knowing then if he should live or die?  Even when
she did point the way of thy duty, didst thou not let her again depart?"

"That was the Baas's doing," I argued lamely.  "He made of it an
accident and enjoined me that I speak not of the girl."

"And was it for that thou saidst naught at thy Post of the way thou
hadst found through our mountains?"

"How know you that?" I questioned, surprised and angered.  "Are you a
reader of minds?"

"In this trifling thing there were no need," she answered calmly.  "I
have but to twist small threads to make a rope.  Yet in the measuring
of men's minds I have indeed some skill, for long have I served the
ancient Wisdom.  The time approaches, if the gods permit, when I at
last may rest.  Now only I am left of those all-wise and all-powerful
in the ages past, to hand on the torch of knowledge lest it be blotted
out.  And I grow weary, for the years' burden weighs.  Therefore in
part it is that thou hast been called hither, that thou mayst learn
what is demanded of thee and of that White Princess who hath come to us
at last, her life merging with thine as the spirits foretold.  Perils
encompass her and hands of hate stretch forth on every side, to
frustrate or set back the purposes of the deathless ones, albeit She
knoweth it not as yet....  By thee and by thee alone may She be saved,
and with her the secret lore of that race which elsewise with me
perishes."

There was in her mien a flickering up of strangely compelling
authority, and in her voice a note of tragedy.  She had cast before her
upon the ground her handful of knucklebones,[10] over which she now
bent, peering and mumbling.  The adder slipped to her feet, and (having
no mind for closer acquaintance with it or other reptiles, of which I
suddenly bethought me that vast and gloomy cavern must hold its many
broods), I mounted hastily the ebon block, sitting myself down there in
that huge chair.  At once the withered crone touched again with her
hand my boot, then stood erect, to address the tremendous emptiness as
though it were peopled, as doubtless it once had been, by a great
multitude.


[10] The common practice of African soothsayers is to use a collection
of small bones, the future being read from the form they take when
thrown.


"Give heed ye all, for here indeed begins the appointed end!" she
chanted exultantly, her shrill piping uncannily loud in that vast and
empty place.  "Fulfilment of the prophecies is at hand, for as the time
draws near that I surrender my trust, hath it not been foretold that a
tall chief, like unto Her in stature as in colour, shall cross great
waters to seat himself on the throne of her Chief Minister and thus to
serve Her!"

To me she turned then again, signing fealty and homage.

"The spirits of the countless marching generations of the ages speak
through me, lord," she intoned impressively.  "Let not thine ears be
shut nor thine heart be hardened.  Harken unto the end!"

A moment she studied the scattered bones upon the floor, through and
around and over and about which the adder twined and twisted, weaving
fantastic patterns, else did imagination sadly trick my eyes.

"I see," she chanted with lifeless slow monotony, "a messenger hasting
hither, to dwell for a space in the unseen world companioned by
hovering Death, yet unafraid.  And with him is another through whom
(unwitting slave) the purpose of the gods is, alas, delayed, and these
two pale-skinned agents of the immutable Law are doomed to wander long,
distraught and desolated, by black despair beset until Light comes
again....  Wars and storm-wrack and death and ruin in this so fair
land....  Rivers bank-high with blood--blood of Bhagwan,[11] of Boer,
of Englander as well.


[11] Zulu.


"My lord goes down into the deeps, living long in the grim shadowland,
companioned by griefs, in agony of mind.  For him sun no longer shines
nor do birds sing or any flower bloom.  Hate holds his bridle-rein,
leading far into dread darkness, the Way lost and by him forgotten.
Death mocks and flees when he would embrace the god of the great
transition.  His heart is turned to stone and his blood to water.  He
peers through prison bars yet courts not freedom from aught save life
itself.  For him a limitless emptiness of all save madding memory.  An
outcast wanderer, vainly he seeks oblivion in far lands
until--until----"

The strangeness of the scene, the time, the unearthly all-pervading
light, the atmosphere of ages dust-embalmed, doubtless had laid on me
their heavy spell.  Some occult compelling factor of her mind or
madness, even in such fantastic monologue, had held me mute and
motionless till then.  Cold hands of a malevolent invisible host seemed
to reach out, clutching.  To my distraught imagination, leering fiends
were massed in spectral battalions in that infernal subterranean
stronghold of the dead, to pull me down and down....  To escape such
hideous nightmare of the wandering mind it seemed that I must rally the
uttermost resources of my soul.  Gasping and sweat-bathed, I leaped
down from that great black das....

Followed such sudden peril as racks the nerves.  I had sprung forward,
all forgetting the fearsome machinery of her mummery the witch had
spread about her upon the ground.  Something slimily soft slithered
beneath my foot and I fell heavily.  Then, swift as lightning flash, I
saw the adder's head drawn back for the darting death-stroke.  But
strangely swifter was the aged doctress.  Her little wand flashed by
the serpent's head.  I did not see it touch the venomous thing--yet it
was forthwith dead!

The witch, thus having saved my life, forgot me quite, to prostrate
herself in the dust before that still-writhing thing, rocking and
crooning to it, the while I bolted in panic from the awesome place,
trembling and filled with fear of I knew not what--desiring only the
cool, clean breath of the honest wind and the sight of the open
world....  Silvery mist of moonbeams filtering through the rock-hewn
portal at length gladdened my tortured eyes.  Recklessly I plunged
toward it.  Faintly, as a distant whisper, I heard an imploring voice
far, far behind me:

"Return ye, lord, and listen to the end!"

Nothing on earth could have got me back in that charnel-house again.  I
groped and stumbled on, fearing I knew not what.  The night breeze
brought heavy-sweet fragrance of the mimosa bloom, and at the instant
there rang in my ears a strangling, despairing cry....

"The old witch dies," I thought.  Yet I could not go back to see what
had befallen.  Undoubtedly she was mad--she or else I?




CHAPTER IV

THE MAGIC STONE AND MEISJE

Of how I reached the stead I have scant remembrance.  My brain was in a
whirl.  The huts and farm-folk slept in the tranquil moonlight.  I fell
in with no one until I stood again by my window.  My hands were on the
sill, for I thought to return as I had left, when a lengthened shadow
fell on the farmhouse wall.  Turning quickly, I was barely in time to
see a stalwart kaffir stride swiftly toward the herders' quarters.  He
must have seen me, yet he gave no sign.  It mattered little, I reminded
myself, whether he talked or not.  He could not have seen me ere I
regained the farm.  One thing impressed itself: that big fellow was a
stranger, superior to the class in Gentil's service.  In the glimpse I
had had of him, he had looked an _induna_.[1]  I watched till his
straight, muscular form was lost in the gloom of the huts.  Then,
vaulting the window, I was soon in bed, though sleep long withheld
itself, and, when it came, was fitful, broken by horrid dreams.  I was
up with the first streak of day, even before the house folk.


[1] Headman, counsellor or captain.


In the living-room I found Lydekker's book on the table.  Having time
then to kill, I picked it up and read more carefully his description of
the Marbled Cat.  The picture of the little furry creature struck me as
strangely familiar, yet I had never been in India nor specially
interested myself in animals of that country.  Understanding came in a
flash: that pictured pelt was an exact replica of the uncommon moocha
of the White Witch, as they had named her.  How could she have become
possessed of such a skin in this far corner of the African highveldt?
Once more I pored over the elaborately scientific description, with
quickened interest.  Its habitat was very exactly defined, yet might it
not be found in the Transvaal also?  While still I pondered this
possibility, Gentil joined me.

His glance turned instantly to the book and he fumbled for paper and
pencil.  But the chit he passed me was merely a morning greeting.
While I replied perfunctorily, his pencil again was busy.

"A rare and peculiar feline," he had scrawled.  I nodded agreement,
remarking casually that even books of science sometimes were wrong.
Had he ever thought its habitat might possibly extend to the African
highlands?  His eyes at this suggestion betrayed excitement--a
scientist's enthusiasm, I assumed.

"I myself killed one many years ago on the Dihang river," he commented.
"But I have never seen or heard of it on this continent."  He seemed to
check an impulse to write more, watching me questioningly.

"Did you notice that girl's moocha?" I asked.  He paled perceptibly and
began a nervous pacing of the room.  Then, dropping into a chair, he
scribbled again and resumed his restless promenading.  This time his
writing was barely decipherable.

"I had such a skin when I came hither," I managed to make it out, "but
lost it years ago.  It has perchance been found."

That certainly was a rational explanation, and my picture of myself as
a scientific discoverer faded.  Yet why should he be so obviously
worked up about a matter thus logically disposed of?

Breakfast over, I planned to start back for the Post at once, so as not
to lose the morning's cool.  Jean had been watered and brought round,
and I was saddling up when the old farmer stalked toward me, and at the
same instant I caught sight of a tall, dignified kaffir--a ringed-man
of middle age, whom I knew instinctively for the one I had caught sight
of in the moonlight.  He, too, was turning out from the stead.  Gentil
saw I had noticed him.

"One of Sankaeli's people," he wrote hastily.  "The king has been
losing cattle and requires the witch to find them."

My mind leaped instantly to that sombre court in the mountain's heart
where I last had seen her rocking and moaning over her dead snake.  Her
anguished cry rang in my ears anew.  I wondered if she still lived or
lay stark in that vast and empty audience room of a vanished race.  But
as to that and my night's adventuring, prudence counselled silence.

"Have you sent for her?" I asked, since he seemed to await response.

Once more he hesitated before writing.

"It was a _white witch_ he sought," I read over his shoulder.  "I told
the messenger I knew of none such--it was old Zeete I had summoned when
the child was taken and who got it back for us."

"Well, and what then?" I questioned.  "Is he"--I pointed to the
disappearing kaffir--"is he going the right way to find her?  Or do you
send her after him?"

He seemed to study overmuch on so plain a question.  At length,
however, he wrote, and I read with growing surprise while the mare
capered and curveted:

"He said a _white_ witch was commanded.  He goes now to make report....
Keep touch with me, friend, for indeed I know not what goes forward.
Many things perplex, of which I may not speak till I know more.  If
need arise, I will send.  Will you then come in haste?"

Of course we would--that was part of our job, I told him.  Privately I
made up my mind, as Jean danced away with me, that I'd be the one to go
if he ever called on us at the Post.  Promise of adventure challenged;
mystery rode the air.  And now that I was once more in the saddle, and
the straightforward sunlight, I was a bit sore at myself for streaking
it like a scared bunny out of that musty cavern with its weird old
paintings and its unearthly light.  Yes, I'd certainly have to go back
there some time and have a look round....  And I wasn't forgetting that
I'd promised to meet that same White Witch at the mountain pool.

So busy was I with my tumbled thoughts that I gave scant heed to the
road and scarcely a word to Jean as we pressed on in the mounting heat.
Happenings of the day and night
crowded--confused--detached--incoherent: the unaccountable adulations
of that wrinkled sorceress; the awesome cave chamber with its magical
glow; Gentil's peculiar actions and half-confessed fears; that marbled
catskin moocha the girl had worn; the nerve-trying maunderings of the
wizened seeress and her blood-chilling prophecies; hints of lurking
perils menacing my sprite of the hidden kloof; that messenger of ill
omen of whom Zeete had spoken!  Hot as the day had grown, I shivered
with apprehension, of what I knew not.

The mare, missing usual caresses, soon ceased her coquettish curvetings
and rushed swiftly on.  I should, of course, have checked her had not
my thoughts been elsewhere.

That messenger?  The ringed-man at the stead?  Could the old witch have
known of his coming and thought to play on my scant credulity?  He had
sought the White Witch and she was gone.  Gentil denied her
existence--stranger still.  The old man's every move hinted of
irritating concealments; the one thing definite in the maze of
contradictions in which he seemed enmeshed was his constant thought to
shield the girl, from something of which I knew naught.  I, too (I
could not deny it), was shielding her.  Why had I said nothing about
her at the Post, taken no steps to find out who she was?  Some strong
but subtle force seemed to have sealed my lips....  The ancient hag had
said our fates were intertwined.  I laughed at the idea--and yet I
cherished it.  Where was that laughing sprite now?  Beset by savage
enemies?  My pulse quickened and I halted, half-minded to turn back.
Jean looked inquiry.  Not until then had I noticed she was lathered and
trembling.  Reproaching myself, I dismounted, to run a hand over the
steaming neck.  Seldom had I so misused her....

Only then did I notice we were again at the outlet of the secret trail,
and the hour little more than noon!  Poor Jean!  She followed daintily
as I passed round the great moss-covered boulder to the cool of the
thick-bushed kloof.  Loosening the girths, I left her to cool and graze
while I sat with my back to a rock, the spruit gurgling at my feet.
Ensconced thus comfortably in the refreshing dimness, lulled by the
rippling stream, no doubt I dozed.  The snapping of a twig brought me
bolt upright, to find myself not alone.  My Jean, as a rule resentful
of any stranger's touch, stood a few yards away, relaxed delightedly,
while Zeete massaged her slender legs, crooning to her the while.  I
watched her curiously.  Like all her cult, she had an uncanny way with
animals, but it amazed me that my mare, high-spirited and fiery, should
be so tractable under another's hands.

Seeing me watching her, the sorceress gave Jean a parting pat and came
slowly to me, looking older and feebler since even the night before.
Sadness appeared to weigh upon her and some dignity of her years.
Quietly she greeted me, with praise of Jean as from a knowledgeful
lover of horses.

I thanked her for care of the mare, whereat she smiled and muttered
that they were old friends.  Followed a long silence.  I knew it was by
no accident she was there, yet wondered how she had guessed at my
halting as I had not intended.  She had seen no messenger from
Sankaeli, so she said, when I told her he sought her, to recover cattle.

"He seeks not me," she sorrowfully responded.  "Nor are cattle missing
from the king's kraal."

"Why should my lord and his servant thus play at words?" she abruptly
asked, her tired eyes upon me.  "Ill winds have borne to the black
chief's ear what I have long kept from him.  He has heard of my
mistress; now he would straightway see her; and, having seen, he surely
would desire.  What he desires, he takes....  Wouldst thou see the lamb
snared for the lion's lair?"

The time seemed ripe for fuller understandings.

"If you would have my help, in what I know not, forgo this mummery," I
told her.  "Who is this white maid and what does she here, leading the
kaffir life?  You call her Chieftainess--Princess.  These others name
her witch.  Read me the riddle.  Our lives, you say, follow the
selfsame road.  Speak plainly, then, lest my feet be tangled in the
skein of ignorance."

Her hand fell forthwith to the bag strung beneath her arm.  Frowning, I
shook my head.

"Straight talk--no more foolery," said I.  "Last night we had overmuch
nonsense."

The faded eyes flashed sudden indignation.

"So it is ever!" she cried.  "We name as mummery that which is beyond
our ken.  All knowledge is but nonsense to the dull.  The white man
thinks he alone hath wisdom....  He strings his singing wires across
the land to speed his messages--yet we simple folk, when we have word
for far places, need no such trumpery."

The "underground telegraph" is one of Africa's many closely-guarded
secrets.  That gave me food for thought.

"Last night the spirits of my dead were with me to aid thee, lord," the
pigmy seeress went on.  "It was their kindly wish that thou shouldst
not blindly follow where the fates shall lead--the path that in the
coming months thy lagging feet must tread.  My lord had need of
counsel, yet he would not harken.  My lord hath need of sight, yet
closed his eyes.  My heart is heavy for him, but he binds my hands."

"That was indeed a cheerful tale----"

"Thou wouldst not hear me through," she interrupted.  "Much more there
was----"

"No," I denied her sharply.  "I listen not.  Keep you your magic for
those who believe in it, being of your blood and custom.  I am white.
That girl, too, is white.  Who, then, and what is she, and how comes
she here?"

"That I may not say now," she answered, "for the time is not come.  She
is one I serve truly as the gods command, and dare to love as though I
had suckled her mother and my blood indeed flowed in her veins as it is
believed....  Since thou wilt stop thine ears to the voice of Truth,
little more may I speak.  But, since through thee Her destiny must be
accomplished, this will I say: Remember when thy days be midnight and
Death spurns thee:

"Out of Darkness is the Sun reborn.  Spring treads on Winter's heel.
The price is great, but greater the reward.  And when thou hast crossed
black waters and sitteth at the feet of a doctor of thine own kind and
colour, harken thou to his words, since in mine thou hast not faith.
Long will be the way, beset by sorrow.  Yet shalt thou find happiness
and favour of the ancient gods _when at the last thou hast passed
through the waters of thunder_ to fulfilment of thy destiny--and Hers."

She spoke as one inspired, and, though I could make no meaning of her
wild talk, I heard her to the end.

"When she doth send, thou wilt surely come?" she questioned, dropping
her chanting drone.  "I indeed grow feeble and need thine aid.  Thou
asketh me of the White Chieftainess.  Ask rather the maid herself; her
lips were redder and sweeter for the telling.  Therefore wilt thou
believe them."

She fumbled in her pouch and brought out a whitish stone--quartz of
some sort, I judged.

"Take thou this token," she urged, laying it in my palm, "nor ever part
with it, for its power is great.  Many there be who for but the
smallest bit would give many cattle and slaves and secrets of the
land--for hearts are drawn thereto as water to the sun."

The native mind is crammed with superstitions and all the doctors and
doctresses drive a brisk trade in charms.  To humour her I took the bit
of stone and dropped it in my pocket.  Yet scarcely had I done so than
it seemed suddenly a thing alive.  In some alarm I felt for and brought
it forth.  My knife and keys were glued to it as though part of the
stone itself.  At that I in some measure understood.  White
magnet-stone figures largely in kaffir legend, valued beyond gold or
diamonds, though never had I heard of any having seen it.  Infallible
as a love charm, the natives say.

In black magnet-rock no such occult power is held to rest.  In truth it
is common enough in certain parts.  We had a police post called Magnet
Heights, such rocks all thereabouts, with little vegetation.  The paths
and open spaces were very bare and clean, free from all dust.  When a
shod horse passed over them he was easily followed, for the tiny
particles of this magnet-stone stand upright wherever iron touches,
like little patches of black fur.  It was a healthful post.  In storms
the lightning incessantly struck the mountain at its back.  But the
post was always safe.

With difficulty I separated my knife and keys, giving the luck-stone a
pocket to itself.  It was a worthwhile souvenir, I reflected, nor
dreamed how in a later day it should save my life--nor how I should
come to hate it because of that.

      *      *      *      *      *

We had plenty to do that next month, picking up stray coolies, nabbing
a few Zulu envoys we couldn't get a thing on (or out of), and running
down a thieving bunch that had been lifting the missionary's stock.  It
was the day after I got back from Gentil's, too, that I ran across that
Irish-Australian.  Found him down by the river, all in with fever, and
lugged him to the Post, where we nursed him back to health.
Interesting sort, he was--a wizard with horses.  Claimed he could cure
a mare of the sickness every time, but couldn't work the trick on
horses--didn't see why.  Had his old clothes sewn full of sovereigns
and nothing but a rusty tin of dripping to go on with when I picked him
up.  Hoofing it to Pretoria, so he said, and had tried a short cut.
Didn't say where he'd come from or what he'd been doing.  Queer
stick--likeable at that.

I had had a hard day on patrol and had pulled off my boots to rest the
feet while we sat gassing after supper, the Aussie and I.  Neither of
us had heard a sound and the dogs hadn't let out a yip, though they
generally kicked up a frightful shindy if they smelled kaffirs about.
We didn't even hear the door open, when a flower came sailing through
the room and lit on the table, right by my hand.  We both jumped for
the door as it was closing, but there wasn't a soul in sight.

"Odd thing, that!" I said as we came in.

Our accidental guest had flopped down at the table.  He was pretty
shaky yet.  The flower lay there and he picked it up, studying it
curiously.

"I can understand a lady heaving posies at you, handsome big boy," he
drawled, joking as usual.  "But I'm blest if I ever saw one just like
this before, and I'm something of a shark on botany.  Might be the
Royal Lily."

I hadn't given the flower a thought till he passed it over.  Knew it
then like a shot for one of those arum lilies the hidden kloof was full
of.  Guessed what it meant, too.  Must have looked the silly blighter,
for he went off in a fit of laughter.

"Guilty as charged!" he chuckled.  "Question now is, who's the lady?"

Up to that I hadn't opened my mouth to a living soul--and I'd only
known this chap a week.  Didn't even know his name or a thing about him
but the very little he'd told us, and that shady.  Somehow I'd taken to
him, though, for one of our own sort.  I'd naturally been thinking a
lot about things over Gentil's way.  Couldn't make head or tail of the
mess.  Well, anyway, I elected him father-confessor and spun my yarn.
Sounded crazy enough when I told it, but he didn't once interrupt, and
he didn't laugh.

"An odd bag of tricks," he commented.  "But then this is Africa....
You shouldn't have legged it from that little sance till your old crow
had rung down her curtain; don't know what you may have missed....  But
the girl, now, that's another horse.  Quite certain she's white?"

Of course I was, and I said so.  A little huffy I may have been about
it.

"There, there! steady it is!" he cut in.  "She's a Swede if you say so,
and a crown princess to boot.  Might be at that.  Chief's albino
daughter or something of the sort.  Account for a lot, eh?  Blood's
weight to carry in these parts.  They've a very pretty trick of
strangling royal children occasionally, as p'raps you've heard--jealous
queen-cats, king's orders, or some such rot."

That was common enough talk.  One of our fellows, I remembered, had
found two babies dead near a watercourse.  His report had been promptly
quashed.  "Policy," the O.C. explained.

Yet something told me my Golden Girl was no albino kaffir, princess or
plebeian.  I wasn't any nearer guessing who or what she was, but our
sundowner's talk got me thinking of her harder than ever, and I hadn't
forgotten how worked-up old Zeete had been--Gentil also--over Sankaeli
sending for her.  I liked the idea of that lily as a messenger, too.
Would have started right off that night if I could have wangled it; but
I wasn't my own boss by long odds.  Couldn't hatch up a ripe excuse.
As it happened, I didn't have to.  While I sat racking my brain for an
idea, the corporal rode up and came stamping in.

"Guess you're elected again," he broke the news.  "Got a tip there's a
couple of Zulu envoys headed for Sankaeli's kraal.  Ought to overhaul
'em.  You know the lay of the land."

Nothing could have suited me better, though I tried not to let on.  Our
rag-tag visitor grinned through a cloud of smoke.

"I'll take a turn over that way," I agreed, casually as I could make
it.  "Where'd the info' come from?  Straight, is it?"

"Well, among us three," he confessed, "it was a bit odd.  Ran across
one of those mangy witch-doctresses coming along, and she spilled the
beans--simple-minded soul, old as the hills.  Liked to hear herself
gabble.  Never dreamt she was giving the show away."

A wink was the Aussie's comment.  Luckily the corporal missed it.  I'd
a fair notion myself who the chatterbox was; and I certainly admired
the smooth way she'd worked things.  I'd get hold of our Zulu friends
if they really existed (I had my doubts) and have time to spare if I
took the secret trail.  Suited me fine.

Our guest turned out at daybreak to see me off.  The others weren't up
yet.

"That was your sorceress I'd judge," he said as I forked the mare.
"Strikes me she's no fool.  Might be good business for you to play up
to her.  They can be heaps of help if they have a mind to, and you seem
to be the fair-haired child with this one....  But keep an eye out for
tricks if you bump into the old Chief.  He's pretty thick with the
Zulus just now; cute enough not to make a break through till he sees
how the land lies....  Give my homage to Her Royal Highness if you
should happen to meet her."

His eyes twinkled as he waved me away.

We hit a smart pace till I'd made the big rock; had the road all to
ourselves.  Going up the kloof I kept a sharp look-out for Zeete; felt
pretty sure she'd bob up somewhere.  But it wasn't till I had got to
the trailhead that she came hobbling out of the bush to take the mare.

"The two whom you seek are at the painted rocks," she told me as I
swung off.  "They sleep soundly.  Also they are fast bound."

That was fixing things for me with a vengeance!  I didn't know just
what to make of it.

"Now that thou hast naught to concern thee," she went calmly on, "it
may be in thy heart to visit the fountain where Tagelash watches--and
one waits.  Afterwards I have words for thy ear."

I stayed for no more, but began clambering round the great barrier
rock.  Her quavering voice trailed after me:

"I wait on the lower path!"

Swinging myself down, to my chagrin I found that quiet nook deserted.
I searched and shouted in vain.  When I stooped to peer over the kranz,
thinking She might be on the lower trail, why, She was _there_, close
behind me, laughing at my amaze!  I turned to question her of how she
had come thither, but before I knew it was holding her in my arms, all
I had meant to say forgotten....  I only knew that she was very dear.

The sun had begun to drop towards the crest of the ridge ere I sought
to quizz her, calling the kaffir phrase-book to my aid.  Who was she?
Whence came she there?  Her shy responses gave no clue.  Her name, as I
made it out, was in the Sesuta, Masselene.  Meisje I re-christened her
as much better.  She knew not why until I made it clear.  It is the
Dutch for flower--Maisie, as we would say in English.

She was, time and again she insisted (for I could not credit it),
grand-daughter of Zeete, the witch-doctress.  Parents she had never
known.  Her mother, long since dead, had been a chieftainess, the
grand-dame had often told her.  Of her father she knew little.  Zeete
had named him an evil man whom the gods would punish.  The mother, in
their tongue, had been called "The Woman of Tears."  She herself had
always lived with Zeete, learning her ways and wisdom.  They had never
once been parted until lately she had been called, with other maidens
of the country, to a school on a distant peak to which she pointed with
trembling finger.  Thence she had returned but two suns since.  "Up
there" she had suffered, yet had she held her head high, keeping pride
and place.

How she could come and go thus swiftly and soundlessly to and from the
pool she would not say.

"Of that I may not as yet speak, even to thee," she pleaded, nor could
I break her will.  And when she saw that I was vexed with her, the
rosebud mouth quivered and the blue eyes filled.  She brushed away a
threatening tear.  It ill becomes a chieftainess to weep.

In all the years of her life, seventeen (she checked them off on her
fingers) until I had come to her "from the sky," she had seen none of
her own colour since her mother "went to the ghost people."

"Not even the Baas below?" I asked in surprise.  "Him you struck down
almost to his death?"

At that she crimsoned and paled, shaking her golden head.

"Him I had never seen," she declared, perplexed.  "Never had I gone
down to the stead until that day I followed upon the trail, fearing
that thou wouldst fall.  It was commanded not....  I sinned in going
thither, and see how swiftly evil befel.  For when he had cruelly slain
my baboon (which had indeed harmed none) in sudden passion I struck,
meaning to kill even as he had killed.  A wicked spirit filled my heart
with anger--until I saw his face.  Then sorrow and shame were mine, for
he was one who in the long ago oft came to me when sleep gives our
helpless bodies into the keeping of the watchful dead.  In such a
vision it must have been, for we had never met."

She rocked on her heels, sobbing softly.  I sought to comfort, but she
put me from her.

"Nay, I am a wicked girl," she insisted piteously.  "I did break the
law, heeding not my duty.  Also I would have shed blood.  Punishment is
meet."

To cheer her I would have made light of the matter, for the man was
little harmed and bore no malice--even had besought silence concerning
her, as I pointed out, and had told Sankaeli's _induna_ he knew her
not.  Her eyes opened wide at that, amazed and much alarmed.

"How knew the king of me?" she questioned, trembling.  "Our servants
have speech for no other ears than ours, nor could they be untrue.
Mischief indeed breeds quickly.  What more shall my disobedience bring
to pass?  My head is in the dust.  Leave thou me now, lest I work harm
to thee, beneath whose feet I would put my life."

Remorse and contrition marked her self-abasement, yet there was in her
mien unconscious dignity and regal pride.  Her innocent avowal of frank
regard made music on my heartstrings.  My arms reached out, and,
passionless as a child, she crept to them.

"This must indeed end all," she faltered, "for with thee I am wax.  My
will melts in thy eyes as snow the sun smiles upon.  I pray thee, then,
go quickly, and return not....  For I am weak, yet would I fend thee
from hurt."

How could I leave her thus, besieged by fantastic fears and foolish
fancies?  I did but hold her closer, and for a little while she lay
very still.  My thought was she had fainted, and I would have lain her
down and fetched water from the pool.  Divining my intent, she opened
dew-dimmed eyes.

"Nay, for a moment stay," she softly breathed.  "This moment I would
cherish."

Caressing hands drew down my head to hers.

"Listen thou, my Chief, so that thou walkest not in darkness, to curse
my name," at length she said, firm-voiced.  "Since I was but a child I
have looked for thee, for thy coming truly was foretold.  Through Zeete
it was declared thou wouldst come to me, even as thou didst come.  Long
hast thou filled my dreams, yet often have I doubted that I should
really look into thine eyes and feel thine arms about me, even as now
they are....  Ah, Thou--Thou indeed didst come!

"I did forswear my duty and break the Law, thereby begetting grief and
suffering.  The wisdom of those commanding Light and Life, rightly to
punish me, now saith that, most of all to thee, I shall be a scourge--a
thorn to pierce even to thy soul.  My flesh is turned to ashes and my
heart to ice.  Rather than that I will defy the gods, do with me as
they may!"

Sombre exaltation was in her voice, as that of a youthful martyr
advancing bravely-proud to sacrificial altar.  Foreboding, shapeless
and lacking reason, weighed heavily upon me.  I could not speak, but
held her more closely to me, whereat she smiled--a wan, sweet smile
that I may not forget.

"Nay, tempt me not otherwise," she pleaded bravely, "for there is
indeed no other way beside.  Through me thou wouldst suffer overmuch,
thou who hast wrought no ill....  Not Flower is my name, say rather
Grief.  The spirits have told of me as one born to great power, vast
treasure, and strange knowledge.  For such what desire have I, if the
trail thereto leads thee into the deeps?"

I know not what subtle necromancy benumbed my will and took from me my
reason as she spoke, but inky clouds seemed to blot out the sky.  The
clean air swiftly changed to poisonous vapour.  Singing of birds became
the hiss of serpents.  Intangible horrors possessed the honest earth.
In that black hour it was borne in upon me that there could be no
escape.  Kismet, or Fate, or the inexorable Law--we tread perforce the
path marked out for us!  Clairvoyant vision in that timeless instant
seemed given me to pierce the mystic veil and show for fact inevitable
that there is no evading what is from the beginning ordained.
Omnipotent forces control the circling spheres, and in the Great Scheme
of all things She and I must, willy-nilly, play out our allotted
parts--this mountain maid of mystery and I (a simple soldier of
fortune, possessing none) were meant from Time's beginning to fuse our
lives, sharing the bitter-sweet of mutual love and faith, passing
through shadow-lands to what end I could not see.  Vague terrors
clutched, nor could I think of aught but that I must hold her close,
shielding and comforting her.

"And what of me?" I questioned, when that dread moment had passed.
"Was nothing said of me by your ill-omened prophets?"

"Are we but puppets, then, of the spirit kings?" she whispered,
clinging tremulous, seeking the transient boon of empty contradiction.

"Of such things I know little," I answered shortly.  "But this I do
know: the fates, or gods, or Providence, as you will, have not without
some purpose and some plan brought us two here together of all the
countless peoples of the world.  Henceforth our paths are one,
whithersoever it leads or how rough the way!"

Long we sat then, heart reaching out to heart....  It was Zeete's
voice, shrill with anxiety, that brought us back to earth and earth's
concerns.  She was below us on that faint, thin trail leading down to
the painted gallery and that vast chamber of the luminous light.
Remembrance of the Zulu envoys reproached me....  My Maisie's lips met
mine in one long kiss.

"Until to-morrow," I whispered, and left her there.  An upward glance
showed her leaning over the rocky ledge to see me safe, as I went down
the reim.  In her sweet face was shadowed dread of dire things to be.
Yet also it mirrored love and a great content.




CHAPTER V

STORMCLOUDS GATHER

Descending the cliffside trail, I marked with growing wonder the many
lone baboons, all curiously silent, that peered down at us from the
rocks and trees.  Always before I had supposed them to go in troops.
Of their strange watchful stillness I was minded to speak; and, seeming
to read my thought, Zeete instantly answered it.

"They are my eyes and faithful servants," she said, as though thus to
make use of the monkey-people were naught extraordinary.  The matter of
that kaffir babe came back to me, with Gentil's talk of the bushfolk,
understanding the baboon speech.  Again the witch forestalled a
question I would have asked.

"The child was harmed not, nor would it have been.  The Baas had indeed
no cause to seek me out, for so soon as the brat was brought we sent it
back.  To slay the poor beast was wantonly wicked, yet at that I marvel
not.  He does not know; therefore he hates them all."

"You spoke of them as servants," I ventured.  "Can you, then, truly
train them to such purpose?"

Did that shrivelled hag possess a sense of caustic humour?  Her dim
eyes twinkled.

"Nay, surely none save the all-wise white lords could work such
marvels," she answered lightly.  "We Little People but ask them to do a
thing, and it seems they do it."

"Ask them?" I echoed, bewildered.

She halted and gave a peculiar, barking call.  Forthwith a great dog
baboon dropped lightly from his perch on the high rocks and hurried to
her side, his little brute eyes questioning.  Again she spoke, or made,
rather, certain strange grunting sounds, for it was no human speech.
The beast went leaping away, soon lost to sight on the falling trail.

"We should learn how the captives fare," she stated blandly.  "Nano
will return to tell."

I could but stare, incredulous and dumb.  Yet soon the baboon was back,
to snarl out a tangle of throaty gutturals and fall in behind us like a
disciplined dog.

"Our men have long since wakened," Zeete said unconcernedly, turning to
me as though interpreting, "but their bonds are fast.  Nor would it
matter had they cast them off, save that in such case they would no
more work mischief."

Confounded and groping for some key to the truth of things seeming
indeed black magic, or that else were arrant nonsense, I feigned not to
have heard.  Yet the baboon had returned and there had seemed some
obvious method in their exchange of wordless gibberish.

"Do baboons, then, act as your guards as well as runners?" at length I
asked, feeling myself a fool.

"Nay, they could not be so trusted," she made reply.  "The wardens of
our caves have less to say, yet are they of more fixed mind.  Wait,
though, and see, for thou wouldst not believe."

As to the prisoners she would tell but little.  The one, I gathered,
was much trusted of Bambata, a warrior and a counsellor of parts.  The
other was that _induna_ I had seen at the stead.  I wondered at his
being mixed in this Zulu business.

"He is a snake of quite another stripe from this unquiet Bambata's
man," Zeete volunteered, cackling as at some jest.  Hate in her tone,
she added:

"Dust he may throw in the eyes of his ageing master, but me he does not
befool.  That he would trick Sankaeli, committing him unwittingly to a
chancy venture, concerns me not at all.  But when he would cross my
plans he had well beware."

Her meaning was far from clear, but something of it I later
gathered--that, acting for his Chief, grown almost senile, this headman
of his was over-deep in intrigue with Bambata's folk, pledging
Sankaeliland support to their desperate cause, himself to reap rich
reward should that cause prevail.  His king meanwhile sought the White
Witch, leaving all weighty matters to his scheming man.

"This dog we hold," Zeete declared with passion, "hath never seen my
lady, yet hath he filled his old lord's head with tales of her rare
beauty, painting her to him also as passing all others in wisdom of
peace and war.  For that, perchance, I am somewhat to blame....  We
have to thank these Amaxosas' coward fears of the unseen ones that they
have not long since found her."

My heart missed a beat at that; and as for the scheming counsellor of
the king, I then and there determined it should be long ere he returned
to Sankaeli's kraal to work further mischief.  These birds she had
limed for us seemed more than common game.

The hanging gallery when we were come to it was peopled with a great
company of baboons that chattered overmuch till we were drawn close,
when fell swift silence, though scores of beady eyes focussed upon us.
At a harsh cry from the witch, the hairy brutes divided into two
companies, one on either side, laying hold of a long rope of
_tambookie_[1] stretched out along the uneven rocky floor, as would two
tug-of-war teams.  And, as I stared, these settled themselves to pull,
one against the other, or so it seemed, whereon a mimosa bush parted as
on that other night of strange happenings, disclosing the well-hidden
entrance to another ancient passageway, lacking the luminous walls.


[1] A rank South African grass sometimes growing to a length of fifteen
feet.


"Whence came that strangely golden light?" I sought to know, as we
groped forward in the half-darkness.

"Surely a white chief hath no need to ask his slave?" she chuckled....
"Nay, I meant not to vex.  In time thou shalt surely know--and of much
else."

She paused at a sudden twist of the rock-hewn hallway (or it more
probably was one of their many natural tunnels), where a great upright
slab appeared to mark the end.  Its uneven surface her claw-like
fingers explored, resting on what in the dull murk seemed but some
chance discoloration of the stone.  Regarding it more closely, I saw
that it was an inset of some metal, ages old.  Her hand on this, Zeete
turned to me.

"Much art thou trusted," she gravely said.  "Wilt thou not, then, trust
Zeete a little, however lightly thou esteemeth her ways?  In these
great hills my people lived through countless years, in which, thinkest
not, they may have grasped some knowledge.  And this remember, that,
trusting me, no hurt shall come to thee.  Let naught alarm thee when we
pass within.  The guardians of this place be serpent folk.  Pay them no
heed, nor move with suddenness, and they will harm thee not....  I
would not again willingly deal death to such as serve."

I bethought me then how quickly she had acted when the puff-adder
menaced me, and how thereafter he had grieved her unwholesome pet.

"I'll try to keep my head," I told her shortly.  She thanked me with a
glance, as soundless the crude door of stone swung wide.

It was like passing into a dank and noisome crypt, a long-closed
sepulchre of unnamable foul things.  The air was stagnant with the
taint of death, a faintly animal and musky scent, loathly and
nauseating, breeding instinctive terror.  The walls and floor told in
their strange soapy smoothness of age-long contacts with sweating naked
bodies.  The way led inward on a slight incline, up which our feet felt
their uncertain course through what suggested both dust and slime and
yet was neither.  I thought of that gruesome stairway Kipling compared
to the track of a monstrous snail.  Until one's eyes accustomed
themselves to the gloom, naught could be clearly seen; yet in a little
time that mildewed gallery took shadowy form.  It had doubtless in long
past time been one of the many natural caverns of the country, improved
by human hands.  Ten feet or more in width it was between its leprous
sidewalls, the roof even less in places--in others lost in black
mystery of darkness.  I thought the place all unlighted, yet as we
worked slowly forward and passed a projecting buttress of sable stone,
I discerned at the end a slender wisp of pallid light, making doubly
dense the enveloping darkness.  Some tiny crevice in the granitic roof,
here of unguessable height, so faintly illumined the den that things
therein, as sight attuned itself to the murk, took spectral shape,
curtained by grey-black fog.  My gaze went to the stygian ceiling,
seeking to pierce its veil, when Zeete's touch recalled me to our grim
business.

The cavern now resolved itself into a bare, rock-ribbed vault,
perchance fifty feet long by twelve or more in width, and at the very
end were two prone bodies that I at first mistook for dead men.  And
coiled by each, on either side, with upraised heads and hard, unwinking
eyes, were huge black mambas,[2] silently watchful.


[2] One of the largest and most dangerous African snakes.


"Stand thou here very still and speak not," Zeete whispered.  I nodded
and she glided from my side to crouch and croon over each of those
great snakes in turn.  They slipped away instantly, to vanish into
holes.  Zeete then beckoned me, and I went on.  The captives, upon
their backs, stared rigidly up at us, but spoke not.  One was a Zulu
warrior, strong-faced and superbly muscled, a giant in middle age.
Over him Zeete bent with uplifted knife.  I sprang to seize her arm,
thinking she meant to strike.

"Nay, he is safe," said she.  "For see, here is one to whom Fear is
stranger.  They be a brave breed, these Bhagwan, though lacking wit."

The man had uttered no sound, even with the blade at his throat.  Nor
was there so much as a tremor of any muscle.

"This strong one's hands were the better for what hangs at thy belt,"
she breathed, her knife descending but to sever his bonds.  He slowly
lifted and flexed his arms, making as though to rise, with difficulty.
His huge frame must have been cramped and numb.  His eyes turning
toward me hardened.  I thought him about to spring upon me.

"No nonsense now," I told him, poking my revolver in his ribs.
Whereupon he grinned, good-humouredly enough, and held out his hands
for the cuffs.  Zeete was stooping over Sankaeli's perfidious headman.

"This two-faced dog were better with the spirits," she hissed
vindictively.  "Give me leave to deal justice."

"No," I ordered sharply.  "It is not for me or for you to say.  All
things must be according to the Law."

"Much trouble would be saved," she sighed, and shrugged, sheathing her
eager knife.  The man gasped his relief, whereat Bambata's warrior
laughed wholehearted contempt for him.

"I obey," mumbled the pigmy doctress; "but my way were the shorter and
more sure."  She faced the Sankaeli man, now shakily getting to his
feet, her voice rasping menace:

"Thou foul and mangy rat, well knowest thou no mercy is thy due!
Justice is but put forward--remember that!  For each and every thing is
a time appointed, and for thee, faithless one, the day thou diest by
this hand of mine.  Leave but my lady from thy crooked schemes and that
day may be long in dawning!"

He stared in superstitious panic, uncomprehending; and when her
talon-like fingers touched him as she bound his arms, he trembled as
with an ague.  Thenceforward Bambata's messenger would have naught with
him.

"Where are thy woman's trinkets?" he taunted.  "Sankaeli's eyes grow
dim not to read thy worthlessness."  For the little witch-doctress, on
the other hand, he showed ungrudged admiration.

"She hath a captain's wit," he declared, trotting at my stirrup an hour
later when we had taken the road.  "We did walk into her trap like two
_tock-tockie_.[3] ... That timorous thing that shames the kehla he
wears (he would be a king, forsooth!) did boast his knowledge of a
shorter way to his old master's kraal, which way we took, minded to
save much time.  He told me not that it lay through the land of the
Little People, else I should have made gifts to the spirit ones and
sought leave to pass.


[3] A slow-moving African beetle incapable of flight, named for its
habit of tapping its abdomen on the ground.


"All went aright till we were come to a darkly-deep _donga_[4] over
which was laid a frail bridge of trees fastened with creepers as in
olden time.  This broke when we were upon it and, falling with it, we
were netted like two rabbits, which would indeed have shown more sense
than we.  As we there struggled to free ourselves, the baboons swarmed
about us and the air grew heavy, so that we slept....  We wakened in
darkness, fast bound in a dreary place, and perforce lay still.  Thou
sawest we had such company as may not be trifled with?"


[4] Dry watercourse or gulch, steep-banked.


There had been a great company of baboons about the steep-banked gulch
into which they fell.  I spoke to the Zulu of the part these creatures
appeared to play as Zeete's messengers, but he showed no surprise.  It
was, I gathered, the common tale of that countryside that the Bushman
dwarfs were thus served.

As to his mission, being of Chaka's strain, he would of course say
nothing, disdainfully silencing hints of possible leniency or
reward--laughing at threats of prison or the rope.  I felt myself
shamed in seeking to gain his secrets when he looked up, his martial
face stern with anger.

"One fears not to be burned who plays with fire," he reminded me.  "But
to ask such as I to tattle of his king's business were scurvy talk
while I be bound with irons!"

Nor could they get more from him at Headquarters, where I delivered the
pair.

"My life is in thy hands, my honour in my own," the Zulu told them
proudly, nor would he answer more.

Sankaeli's _induna_ was of a different breed, and, had I not remembered
Zeete's words, I, too, should have swallowed the glib tale he told.  In
this he pictured himself one grossly deceived, and from him we gleaned
much of Bambata's plans that fitted in usefully.  As he accused
Bambata's envoy of having come unbidden into Sankaeliland to foment a
general war upon all whites, which charge the big Zulu would not deign
deny, we passed on the fighting man to higher hands.  When last I heard
of him he was still in prison, maintaining his stern silence.  The
other I saw soundly flogged and remanded in custody, pending some
further inquiry.  That we had but begun when he contrived escape.  He
was a wily fellow and ready-tongued.  Even I wondered at times if
Zeete, vastly prejudiced, had not misjudged him.  I was on other duty
when he slipped through our fingers, and did not hear that news till a
week had passed.  By then Bambata had the whole countryside in turmoil
and, all but sleeping in saddle, I gave the matter small thought.  When
at length I contrived to revisit the stead Gentil was not about and his
people dumb.  They would not even say where the Baas had gone.

Long hours I spent as well at the trysting pool, anxious and barren
hours.  For none came near save chattering baboons--neither the
laughing White Witch of that hanging fairyland nor even little Zeete.

      *      *      *      *      *

It was in the third week after Zeete's capture of the Zulu envoy and
Sankaeli's _schelm_ of a headman (for which, of course, I, not the
little witch-doctress, got full credit) that we had the hailstorm, and
in those weeks I'd no chance whatever to do anything on my own and not
a whisper came from the stead or the girl of my dreams.  In saddle day
and night, sleep grown almost a total stranger, worked to a frazzle on
patrol and convoy duty, not knowing from hour to hour if we'd be wiped
out, and too fagged much to care, I did my work automatically and set
myself against worrying.  It can't be done, you know; but they always
tell you not to worry, and I tried not to.  If I'd let myself think I'd
have been no use to anyone, and I knew it.

I'd been riding herd on a string of prisoners for Pretoria as far as
our district boundary and got back to the Post all in.  So dog-tired I
couldn't eat--just heaved myself down on my cot, dead to the world;
didn't even pull off my boots.  Haven't an idea how long I slept, but
it must have been hours.  Darkness was closing in when I'd made the
Post, a darkness you could almost reach out and touch it was that thick
and tangible.  And utter stillness everywhere: not a breath of air to
set the tree-tops curtseying; not the twitter of a bird or a rustle in
the tall reeds or grasses.  Uncannily calm and oppressive, as if all
Nature was in suspense, getting ready for doings of some sort.

I'd have known we were in for something if I'd been myself, but
fifty-four hours in saddle and a tricky lot of blacks to look after, so
that I had to keep my eyes skinned every minute, and I wasn't paying
much attention to weather signs when the job was over and I could let
down a bit.  Bed was all I had in mind--bed and the hope that just for
once I could have my sleep through without someone rooting me out to go
chasing after more trouble.

They told me afterwards I hadn't turned in half an hour when the storm
first broke with the roar of a major battle, lashing down the valley
with the hail behind it.  It flattened two of our huts much as
artillery fire might have, and pounded the corporal's dog to a pulp
when he tried to make a dash of it from the messroom.  And I slept
through it all, while the hammer of old Thor boomed and thundered and
the mountains chorused back the din--perversely to come suddenly wide
awake with a sudden lull in the hurricane and a short-lived silence
everywhere like that of the late afternoon, before the rain and hail
began pounding down again on the tin roof of the Post.

My eyes had opened just in time to see our big paraffin lamp gyrating
and guttering wildly as the door opened a mere crack, only enough for a
lean black hand to show as it dropped something on the floor.  The door
closed as I sprang up, and the deluge was on when I dashed out to grab
the visitor.  Whoever the hand belonged to had been swallowed up in the
gloom, and the storm broke anew so quickly I had no easy thing of it
winning back inside, drenched to the skin, and the corporal had to turn
out, grumbling, and help me close the door.  The lamp had blown out.
We got it in commission again and looked about.  It was the corporal
spotted it first, on the floor, catching the light of the lamp--a sharp
little assegai, and close by it a broken string of bluish beads.  When
we examined them closer we saw the sinew they'd been threaded on was
slashed and dyed with blood!

I didn't need to see more, and I didn't have any ears then for
orders--the corporal shouting at me to wait till morning and blistering
me for having gone daft.  It was mutiny all right, but She needed me
and all hell couldn't hold me back.  He about guessed it, too, for he
gave up talking as I snatched my things--even offered to trek along
with me, though he knew he couldn't.  He wasn't a half bad sort,
underneath the skin.

Outside the tempest raged when day should have broken.  A cold, driving
mist blotted out the veldt.  The wind rose shrieking, higher and yet
higher, while I saddled up, driving the damp cold in to the very
marrow.  The gusty squalls grew stronger as I mounted, almost hurling
me from the saddle, so that for once I had to cling to Jean as I flung
myself along her neck.  Through the mists came the rain in great
stinging drops warm as blood.  There was no seeing ten yards in the
swirling fury, but I gripped the mare with my knees and she plunged
forth gallantly.  Almost I think she knew.

We'd scarce made half a mile when the first thunder-clap of the new
storm split overhead and lost itself in endless rumblings in the hills
and kloofs.  It's only out there on the roof of the world that storms
work their full battalions.  Only there come all together the mists and
the tearing winds, the rain, the thunder, the vicious lightning and the
hail--the terrible African hail!

We'd been out from the Post perhaps an hour when it caught us, and had
made less than two miles.  Lucky for us at that, for there was
thereabouts a hut, abandoned but fairly tight, that offered shelter.
Made it in the nick of time; my slicker was pretty well riddled on the
weather side and my arm and face felt as though they'd been the mark
for a shotgun fusillade.  The mare'd got it 'most as bad.  Her neck and
side dripped blood as she crowded into the hut after me, all atremble.
Not a minute too soon we were making it, for hardly were we under cover
when a blue flame of lightning ripped the heavens, and there followed
such a crash it seemed the world must have burst asunder and the air
was thick with the stink of brimstone.

A dozen bolts must have struck within a very short radius and, looking
out, I saw six or seven hares killed and hammered flat on the steaming
earth by the hail as they scurried in quest of safety.

Then came its weird and terrifying roll as it drove and tore at our
ancient roof--dull, uniform, smashing, furious, overwhelming--countless
machine-guns with inexhaustible belts concentrated on the time-thinned
thatch!  To look from the doorway was but to gaze at a shimmering sheet
of steel....

And then, suddenly, cessation--peace and an astounding silence!  The
sun shone.  The wind died abruptly and the mists rolled slowly by, bits
of gossamer melting into the clean, pure air.  Miles away the fearsome
column of the thundering hail charged on.

We took the road again in a transformed world.  The beautiful turf, so
green but an hour since, was battered bare, and seemed, far as eye
could reach, sown with dazzling diamonds where the jagged ice-stones
caught the sunlight on their many facets and threw it back in one
fierce, flashing, blinding glare.  The path bore scant resemblance to
that we knew, and everywhere was mute evidence of the terror that had
ridden the vanished wind: here, a snake grotesquely contorted, crushed
and torn; there, a tortoise broken and hammered through the futile
armour of its shell; partridge and parrakeet riddled as though by
batteries of shotguns at a scant dozen paces; the reddish-brown of a
young buck stretched across the trail, its large eyes glazed,
blood-froth on lips and muzzle.  Jean snorted as she overleaped it.

My eyes subconsciously photographed the far-flung stormwrack where
Death had glutted.  My mind was ahead, with Her.  What peril menaced
her?  How came her summons to me?  How and where should I seek her?
What of watchful Zeete, that she had failed her mistress?

Chin sunk in the sodden collar of my steaming tunic, I cudgelled my
brains for some theory of what had gone amiss--tried to work out some
plan of action, the while giving Jean her head and pushing her cruelly.
Thus it was that we came ere noon to that great rock from which the
secret trail winds upward to the pool of the hidden kloof, and the mare
fell into an easy walk as though waiting orders.  I roused myself to
swing her to the mountain path, and at the moment a snakelike loop of
reim dropped from a ledge above, pinioning both my arms, and I was
jerked from the saddle.

I heard an exultant shout, and glimpsed overhead the evil face of
Sankaeli's treacherous man, whom last I had seen mouthing his threats
of vengeance as he stumbled from the whipping-post.




CHAPTER VI

WHITE MAGNET-STONE MAGIC

If ever a human being belied his creation in God's image it was that
knavish vizier of old Sankaeli.  His gashed and furrowed face was
twisted in a fiendish grimace; his beady eyes glared baleful triumph as
he leered down at me, pinioned and in his power--at his mercy I'd
almost said; mercy was utterly alien to his savage soul.  Relieved of
my weight in the saddle, Jean had bounded away with an affrighted
snort.  I could hear her hoof-beats in diminished cadence as she
stormed up the ancient by-path.  And then, pressing close on either
side of the kehla-crowned slave of cunning, appeared two gorilla-like
Chinese, mine-escapees by their garb, hatefully gleeful as he.

I strained impotently at my bonds, whereupon the three of them,
chuckling raucously, hauled at the reim, binding my arms the tighter,
till I was drawn full ten feet clear of the sodden earth.  Either the
leathern line slipped or there was sinister purpose in the play--of a
sudden it gave and down I crashed, striking my head.  My senses swam
and I knew nothing more until, awakening as from a nightmare, stiff in
every bone and joint, a cruel composite of aches and pains, I found
myself stretched on my back in a sylvan glade, the blistering sun
streaming down through tapering trees to scorch my face, and swarms of
diminutive flies invading my mouth and eyes.

My arms I could not move; fast bound they were with green hide.  My
feet, I soon discovered, also were lashed together.  With torturing
effort I could but raise my head scant inches and mark the scoundrel
trio as they squatted a few yards distant, deep in council.

Where I was or how long I had lain there were equally past conjecture.
The leafage told me it was some way off and above the path, while no
whisper of the gurgling spruit came to aid location.  My temples
throbbed and pounded, sticky with clotting blood.  Dizziness and nausea
raked me, yet somehow I managed to pull myself together and let out no
whimper.  By tightly closing and rapidly winking my eyes I scattered
the clustering flies so that, through slitted lids, I could take stock
of my villainous captors, still in confab.

That they had dared such a trick, and I in the Police, showed how
desperate they were and how slim chances were for me.  Their lives were
forfeit, as well they knew.  I was doomed to die.  To escape torture
was my best hope.  Cold wrath possessed me, banishing physical ills.
It seemed, indeed, to give me flooding strength--put heart in me for
anything.  I raged for revenge, but to win it I must first escape.  And
how was that possible?  I dared not think of my interrupted mission or
I should have, indeed, gone mad; and never had I stood so in need of
all my poor wits.

By straining at my bonds I soon found there was no loosing them,
although by twisting my wrists I painfully purchased slight slippage
with the left.  The Sankaeli man glanced casually toward me and I had
sense enough to feign unconsciousness.  When I again ventured to peep,
he still squatted there, quite alone.  His coolie chums had vanished,
doubtless in quest of the mare.

And right there, for all my troubles, I was able to fetch a grin.  I
knew what a lively reception she would give them if they came within
reach of her teeth or heels.  More power to her!  At the same time I
hoped they'd not find her.  If only she had returned to that
storm-swept track and would make her way back to the Post, aid might
come not too late.  But of all forlorn hopes I knew this was an outside
chance.  The mare would more likely graze and wait for me.  No, I
couldn't count on her.

The Sankaeli got up.  I could feel him coming near, though he moved
stealthily.  I held myself immobile, scarce daring to breathe.  The
vexing flies returned.  My nose told me he was bending over me.  For
ages it seemed I waited to feel his blade.  Instead, a hand plucked my
knife from its sheath, then fumbled at my watch-pocket and I felt my
treasured timepiece leaving me--and heard at the self-same instant,
close at hand, the snapping of a twig.  The ringed rascal leaped away
just as one of the cut-throat coolies slipped out of the bordering
bush.  I hazarded a look and hope returned.

Kaffir and Chinese fronted one another, murderously still, not six feet
from where I lay.  My watch slipped from the black man's fingers as his
hand sought the knife.  Then the other sprang, talon-like fingers
clutching for his opponent's throat.  A bony knee found the groin and
the knife tinkled to the ground, nor dared he stoop to pick it up, much
as it meant to him.  It was from then a soundless struggle save for
their laboured breathing, the impact of punishing hands and slither of
naked feet as they wove forth and back, clutching, tugging,
straining--fists, feet, and teeth vindictively at work....  The coolie
had come back but just in time to see the lifting of my ticker.
There's really no honour among thieves, praise be, and that makes most
rows among rogues.

So busy were they battling on the sudden flaming up of Asian passion
that I was quite forgotten, and, sensing this, I threw caution
overboard and twisted and tugged desperately at my wrist until at last
I had freed the hand, so numb, though, as to be almost useless....
Still they fought furiously, the kaffir like a cornered rat,
desperately frantic, knowing he fought for life--the Chinaman gone
amok, a frothing yellow horror.  I had snatched hasty glances while I
worked at the loosened reim, wondering what precious seconds I might
gain before one or the other caught me at it and finished me off.  I
looked again, weighing the chances of freeing my other hand without
bringing them down on me.  They were rolling about, tight-locked and
grunting heavily, for all the world like a couple of ferocious pit
dogs, worrying and tearing at one another, alike eager to make the
kill.  Cautiously I turned on my side, the better to get at my prisoned
hand....

And then came the miracle!

It looked a thin splinter of silver in the trodden grass--very like a
little fish.  With a thrill I knew it for my knife.  Could I but reach
it!  I put my life on the hazard as I inched nearer, half-rolling,
half-snaking myself along.  It was only a few feet from me!  And then
an obtrusive root, a stubborn twig, or something of the sort,
malevolently caught and held me!  Wriggle and tug and twist, I could
not win free.  So near and yet so far!  I stifled a groan of
despair....  The two still fought, gaspingly intent....  My eyes found
the knife again....

Had I indeed gone stark mad?  It surely seemed nearer!  And, stranger
still, I could have sworn it moved!  Almost imperceptibly, yet
unmistakably, it moved--and directly toward me!  Oblivious to all else,
forgetting even my imminent peril, I stared dumbfounded....  Magically
it came closer--more and more quickly, too!  It was but a foot away!
Then it seemed to leap of its own volition at my pounding heart!  My
senses swam.  I knew myself for a fool, but with my free hand I felt
for it and my cramped fingers closed on sun-hot steel--found the
gut-wound haft.  The blade clung tenaciously to me!  And then the
riddle was read:

_The magnet-stone in my pocket had served me well!_

They hadn't gone through me, then!  Probably hadn't had time.  And if
they'd but guessed it, there was treasure for the taking in that bit of
quartz beside which, from the native angle, all the gold in Africa was
as nothing!  Not that I knew it then, or would have thought of it had I
known.  I wasn't yet out of the wood, not by any means.  Even when I'd
cut my bonds I could scarcely stand; and when I managed to get on my
feet things seemed to whirl around me.  Pretty wobbly and stiff; no
bones broken, though.

I got a fresh grip on myself and faced the situation.  If only I could
turn the tables on that precious pair I wouldn't call the King my
uncle.  Yes, but how was it to be done?  My hand dropped to my
holster--empty, of course!  Those brutes still worrying each other had
fight enough left in them yet, and the third might pop back any second.
No, the odds were all against me.  My play right then was a quick and
quiet get-away.  Revenge would have to wait.  I hated like sin to turn
tail, but common sense told me to.  I edged toward the bush, and had
almost made it when they were up and after me with a rush, their own
scrap abandoned.  I had only the knife.  Didn't seem to be much show
for me, but my blood was up.  Back to a tree, I waited.  At any rate,
I'd give them a fight.

The coolie seemed the more dangerous of the two.  He came on like a
charging bull, throwing caution to the winds.  The black blighter
wasn't so keen.  He'd more likely try to work round and heave an
assegai through my back, I thought.  I'd have to keep my eyes peeled
for him.  But right then I had my hands full.  The Chinaman had me
overweighted and he fought like a wildcat; all over me at once he was,
and though I slashed and stabbed, getting home, too, it didn't seem to
deter him.  If he'd had any sort of a weapon I'd not have had a chance.
Strangling seemed his long suit--that and the knee to the body.  The
first time he drove it into me I thought I was done for surely.
Somehow, though, I carried on, and barely managed to break a neck-hold
that would have finished me in short order.  Got my knife home again,
too, half-way up to the hilt in his side.  It staggered him and I'd a
chance to catch my breath.  Out of the tail of my eye I caught sight of
the kaffir, working in with an assegai balanced for a throw.

How I did it I couldn't say, but I spun that coolie round and he got
what was meant for me and went down and out, bringing me to earth with
him, his yellow arms locked round me.  "So this ends it," I thought,
for I couldn't break free.  And ended it would have been but for a
second miracle.  The black was running toward me, when he seemed to
catch himself in mid-stride and freeze, statue-still, listening.  Then,
with a shriek of terror, he turned and dived into the brush; and after
him in a bunch plunged four great dog baboons.  I could hear their
harsh barking as they gave chase....  The fight was over.  I was free
and alone, I didn't know where, with a dead Chinaman at my feet.

The kaffir had dropped his assegai in his sudden panic, and I picked it
up, my watch, too, and started out to get my bearings.  It wasn't so
easy, and the day was almost gone.  Half a dozen tracks led from the
mimic battlefield, buck spoor most of them, but none seemed to go
anywhere.  I was fairly bushed and night was falling.  Stiff and sore
and sulky, I realized that at any minute Sankaeli's man or that second
coolie I'd seen with him might sneak up and get me from cover.  I'd no
notion which way to turn.  A little depression in one of the rocks held
a few cupfuls of stagnant water, and I risked drinking a mouthful and
swabbed my face.  Felt better for that and sat down to try to think
things out.  Didn't dare risk a fire, much as I would have liked to.
Must have sat shivering there half an hour or so, and it had grown so
dark you couldn't see your hand before your face, when I fancied I
heard a voice.  I listened, and it came again faintly, not much more
than a whisper, and from where I couldn't say:

"Baas Ralph!"

It was little Zeete.

I was up like a flash and hailed her back, peering this way and that
into the inky gloom, but as good as blind.  Next minute she was with
me; must have had eyes like a cat.  Never thought I'd be so glad to see
her, but I certainly was.  How she'd found me I couldn't imagine.  It
would have stumped the best of our black trackers.  The mare, she told
me, had come riderless up the secret trail, and she'd started right off
to locate me.  Had mischance befallen me?  And through whom?  Meisje?
Why, no harm had touched her--as yet, although dangers threatened.  Of
that we would palaver later.  The Princess had not sent for me.  Her
assegai had vanished between two suns, also a string of beads....  That
headman had craftily worked a fine trick on me!

But was I of a surety unharmed?  I told her shortly of the fight and
the coolie that would raid no more--also of the kaffir whom the baboons
had so strangely pursued.  That seemed somehow to please her greatly,
and nothing would do but for her to make a light and smear my head with
certain evil-smelling medicaments from her witch's pouch.  Food also
had she, and a tonic drink.  I felt a new man when she had finished
fussing over me, and was more than ready to march when she gave the
word.  Can't lose 'em in the dark, those hill folk.  Instinct, I
suppose.  Jean, she said, was hobbled and waiting at no great distance,
and so we found her, the beldame leading confidently through the bush
whilst I blundered along behind, a hand clutching at her kaross.  She
would have it then that I ride while she led the mare; and thus at
length we came, as a thin crescent moon peeped over a shoulder of the
great hills, to the yawning mouth of a cavern at the rude trail's end.

"Home!" she said, in English, to my amazement.

      *      *      *      *      *

The mouth of the witch's abode gave upon a level and rocky shelf, by
day commanding a far-flung prospect of verdant foothills and unscarred
valley.  Etched in black and silver by a shy young moon, the portal
loomed a dark and forbidding void, full twenty feet overhead, half
curtained by flowering creepers.  A more fit den for beasts than human
habitation it appeared, fiery eyes staring fixedly from the shadows--a
numerous company of baboons by the tainted air, all curiously still.
These noiselessly gave way at our approach, save one huge hairy brute
that leaped suddenly out of nowhere, to bark harshly and, at a sharp
command, regain invisibility.

"This be our outer gate," the sorceress croaked up at me, parting the
tangled leafage with her staff.  "Beyond none trespass, for my servants
watch.  Thou sawest Sankaeli's man as he ran from them?" She chuckled
impishly.  "I warrant he fled not far."  Speech halted there abruptly.
Shortly she added gravely:

"Thou sawest also those two of the yellow aliens lately come hither
amongst our blacks?  Then we must watch, for fear of the spirits they
know not as do these Amaxosas.  Hence make we here no light.  The way
is easy.  Follow upon my heels."

Feeling each step with care, for I had no mind to set foot on some
lurking snake, straightway we marched into the mountain's heart.  And
yet the air was pure and the going dry and uncumbered.  A long, long
way it seemed, walking, as I did, blindly, but presently we came to a
lofty place, less dim and spectral far, shut in by hills, where a faint
breeze stirred and overhead the star-gemmed heavens gleamed.  Here
rocky walls rose aslant, enfolding an amphitheatre of many acres, huge
blocks of stone (that later I knew for altars), therein appearing in
regulated order, much like a druidical circle, fencing an awesome pit
whence rose a thin spiral of sulphurous vapour.

"Here the earth gods wrought justice in time long past," whispered my
pigmy guide.  "Night wanes.  We linger not.  Hither we may come again.
The courts of the dead wait well."

Pressed we then on, hugging the rocky wall.  The trail gave at length
on an ample passage plainly of human fashioning, for shaped boulders
were set one upon another to support crude beams forming a colossal
gateway.  Through this we went and on in unbroken silence until, the
end of the dim corridor being gained, little Zeete halted.  I heard her
fumbling at an unseen door.  This opened presently, a stone slab broad
and high as a cathedral's portal, yet so exactly balanced a mere touch
swung it when one had learned the trick.

At once my eyes were stunned by that same flooding light that first
astounded me when Zeete brought me through the painted gallery to that
grim audience chamber of a forgotten race.  Here, though, it was more
diffused, less dazzlingly radiant; and when my eyes had somewhat
accustomed themselves, it irked them not at all.

The walls here likewise were incised and painted in hues intensely
vivid, as though fresh from the brush.  On the left, the several long
limned scenes bore almost a domestic touch.  Here a group of diminutive
maidens, greenish-grey, like none on earth to-day, gathered eagerly
intent about a wrinkled crone while she fashioned what bore some
semblance to a grotesque doll; there, laughing, exuberant boys,
suggestively reptilian none the less, at practice with tiny blow-guns,
their mark an upright wand, two gnarled and grizzled elders watching
indulgently--guards, or perchance instructors.

Quite filling the opposite wall was a widely different study.  It may
well have been a pictorial record of some spectacular triumph of a long
past time.  A serene, scant-bearded figure in iridescent robes, his
eyes and high forehead veiled, sat throned augustly.  Kingly authority
was in his mien, although he was, as also all about him, of but
childish stature--councillors, men-at-arms, musicians and magicians,
the latter in closest attendance on the exalted one.  Below the das
deployed a long procession of gigantic blacks in ignominious
bonds--Ethiopian, Hottentot, and yet others of markedly Egyptian and
Abyssinian cast--doing homage to this puny monarch of days when the
world was young.  Slaves massed great store of tribute at the royal
feet.  No women were in the multitudinous company, and but one child, a
sumptuously clad, doll-like figure proudly erect beside the throne,
doubtless the princely heir.

Nor was there among those many score of incised and painted figures
that of any beast or bird, either ebony blackness forming the back and
canopy of the seat of state.  Half serpent it was, the cruel head that
of the Assames hamadryad rather than our own dread mamba, to which it
is closely akin--the body a typical lagavaan, doubtless of the Silurian
age.  I myself have seen modern survivors of this amphibian lizard
stretching seven feet, even more.

Further I cannot speak of these weird paintings, uncannily realistic by
being in bas-relief and thereby gaining almost a new dimension.  We
hurried on, passing through a much smaller doorway of faintly fragrant
wood into a palace chamber gorgeously fitted.  A double row of stately
vermilion columns supported the lofty roof, dome-shaped and opalescent
white, as were the encircling walls, with coral panellings.  No
footfall sounded, for strewn about the onyx floor were many rugs of
lion, leopard, black panther, and other wilderness beasts, all
beautifully dressed, caressing to the touch.

Inviting couches extended along the walls, heaped with yet other rugs
of furs softer and finer still and closely woven stuffs of silken sheen
and texture.  Seductive cushions and low ebony tables were scattered
about, the polished tops of some a rich mosaic of creamy ivory and
uncut gems; and at the farther end, framed in dull, beaten gold, was
set an oval mirror of flawless polished metal that verified and
repeated the palatial splendour.

"Kings here have rested," said Zeete quietly, as I stared, dumb with
amaze.  "Rest thou here likewise.  I go to have food prepared.  Later
we talk together.  The time has come, for one we love is hedged about
by dangers....  Nay, ask not more as yet.  Power is gained by
knowledge, which oft must its priceless self be bought with
patience"--for I had found my tongue and questions crowded.  "She for
the present is safe, else we should not be here.  Shortly she cometh
hither.  Let that suffice."

I found myself alone.  A portire of peacock feathers still aflutter
betokened the hidden door through which she had passed.  Sinking upon a
couch, I vainly sought to marshal my wandering wits.  Of a truth I was
over-weary, but sleep was of all things then furthest from my
thought....  She had said the Princess would come--here to this royal
place of history long entombed!  How suited it was to her in her
barbaric beauty!  She was coming, to me!  Believing, I forced content.
My little witch-doctress, too, had promised plain speech at last.  Some
ray of honest reason must then pierce the fog of thickening mysteries?
Till then, why blunder blindly? ... Languor stole over me and I must
have dozed....

Again Zeete stood before me.  One of the tiny tables had been moved
conveniently near, holding wholesome food.  There, too, was my lost
revolver!  How she had come by it she would not say.

"Thine hurts must first be mended," she insisted gently, "for to serve
Her thou wilt need strength, both of body and mind."  Forthwith she
fell to bandaging my sore head with certain bruised and aromatic leaves
and pungent ointments that brought grateful ease.  I managed to swallow
some _biltong_[1] and drank deeply as bidden of a bitter draught she
poured from an antique flagon; then slept again dreamlessly.


[1] Meat cut in strips and dried.


Awakening much refreshed, my head no more a torment and my strength
renewed, I found on the tabouret where my meal had been a curious array
of small useless trifles such as fond mothers cherish, to whom, indeed,
they are beyond all price: a baby's much-worn shoe, a close-clinging
curl of golden hair, a once-blue ribbon, a scrap of lace that had been
a lady's kerchief, a battered doll crudely carved from a mealie cob, a
wedding-ring worn paper-thin, and with these an age-yellowed letter
that to me told nothing, for the uncertain lines in angular, wavering
script were become so faded as to have all but vanished--and they were
in a foreign tongue.

Puzzle on it as I might, I could make nothing of it.  Reluctantly I put
it by, to pick up one by one, with gentling new emotions, those
inconsequential souvenirs of care-free childhood.  How they took one
back along the trail of years--summoned memories to mist the eyes!  A
girl-child's toys, somehow I felt that could they but speak it would be
of Her....  That silken curl twined itself round my heart....

The letter must hold the clue?  Back to it I went; lucklessly it had
for me no more meaning than those fantastic symbols in the painted
gallery.  The more I sought to wrest their message from the pallid
lines, the more futile the task appeared.  Vexation seized me.  The
secret would have to wait for someone more learned than I to read it
from that baffling scrawl....  Plainly a woman's hand, written many
years--but by whom, and for whose eyes?  Back in a tantalizing circle,
no nearer the heart of the elusive problem!  Wait perforce I must, but
where could one be found to answer my riddle in that harried
country-side of plain farmer-folk knowing little but their toil, their
stock and ever-threatening death by hostile blacks?

That letter persisted--insisted.  Where had I seen such writing, those
same curious symbols, before?  Neither Dutch nor English, as certainly
not French or Spanish, the unfamiliar characters wholly unlike the
German.  They had more the look of Greek or Russian.  Russian?  Laggard
memory answered the spur, and I cursed myself for a dull-witted fool,
it all came back so clearly.  That book-lined living-room at the
farmstead in the hidden kloof--pencilled marginal notes in the Lydekker
manual!

No shadow of doubt lingered.  Gentil, the man of solitude, right at
hand!  Not another such scholar in the whole broad veldt country!  Why
hadn't I at once thought of him?  Gentil, the recluse, the scientist,
hapless victim of my Golden Girl's flaming anger, so strangely shaken
at sight of her and who so earnestly had sought to shield her!  Even
denying her existence at risk of Sankaeli's ill-will!  She, too, with
her amazing talk of having known him only in girlish dreams!  More than
chance coincidence here!  The mystery of my mountain maid must be some
way involved with his!

What was it he had said at parting: "Many things perplex of which I may
not speak."  Two challenging enigmas promised to merge; to both Gentil
seemingly held the key.  The stead was near.  Zeete must show the way.
I called, and she straightway came, her age-weary eyes fixing instantly
on the letter in my hand.

"Here am I," she answered, low-voiced.  "Thou hast read the word from
the Halls of Silence?  Did I then well or ill?"

As she spoke she faced me, erect, composed, a dignified if quaintly
pathetic figure.  But the bony finger that pointed to the yellowed
screed was all atremble.  Thus she stood waiting judgment, on what
indictment I could not guess.  If only I could read that letter!

Stumbling for words, I confessed my ignorance of writings in other
languages than my own.  She heard me out in silence.  Then of a sudden
her rigid pose fell from her and, choking and sobbing, she crumpled at
my feet, a frail and aged woman, no more the resourceful wonder-worker
in whose supposed occult powers even I felt a dawning faith.  Something
akin to panic robbed her of her wit and courage.  Long minutes passed
ere she unsteadily gained her feet and tottered toward a second
close-curtained doorway, signing to me to follow.

The inner chamber upon which this gave was small and bare as any
austere monk's cell, save that its upper end was completely filled by a
sculptured figure, grotesque and hideous.  Semblance of man it bore.
The enormous head indisputably was human, with cavernous, compelling
eyes glowing blackly luminous, and a hawk-like nose, or rather beak.
Also arms and hands were man-like, the one resting lightly upon the
knee, the other (outstretched) holding a baton, the end of which
gleamed redly.  For this that tiny wand of the witch-doctress might
have served as model.

True, too, the sculptor had garbed the forbidding figure in rainbow
brilliant robes, richly bejewelled, save that thrown loosely over the
shoulder was a light fur kaross that had a somewhat familiar look.  I
presently recognized it as fashioned of a pelt much larger but marbled
even as the moocha of the golden maid.  The flesh tints of the figure
were greenish-white, suggestive of the belly of a snake; there was,
indeed, something horridly reptilian about the entire fearsome thing
that, stranger as I was to nerves, affected me oddly.  The feet were
very simian, and the rope-like hair curled atop the misshapen head
resolved itself into a serpent.

I looked to see her prostrate herself before the carven monstrosity,
but this she did not.  Instead, with uplifted hand, she began a solemn
chant--an invocation of some sort, I had no doubt, though the spoken
words to me were void of meaning, melodiously liquid and widely
different from any common African speech.  So reverential was her mien
that of mere decency I stood with uncovered head, awaiting what next
might be.  She thanked me with a look as, speaking no word, she led
back to the adjoining chamber so curiously in contrast with that
vault-like shrine.  There, waving me to a couch, she squatted by my
side, laying out, one by one, those childish trinkets--and with them
the yellowed letter.




CHAPTER VII

MESSAGES FROM THE PAST

"By the spirits of my fathers, I speak truth and naught else," quoth
she.  "My oath by the gods is taken, thyself witness.  Hear, then, and
question not."

She paused as if in thought, then went on in measured phrases, her
voice gaining strength and timbre, tired eyes kindling:

"An over-long trail it is I follow back and I would save needless
speech.  Be patient, then, and hearken....  I am indeed almost the very
last of a once mighty people, favoured of the high gods.  Before the
Etruscans were we--before Hyksos, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian.
Cultured Greece and mighty Rome were thousands of years unborn, to wax
and wane.  Egypt had yet to rise from the nourishing Nile, her Pharaohs
rearing mimic mountains to receive their clay and with it the keys of
such wisdom as was theirs.  Before all were we, my people and their
gods!

"Out of the West we came, from beyond the surging seas, bringing to the
gian isles the ripened truths of incalculable years, winnowed and
perfected in stately cities and colleges and temples over which for
countless centuries has rolled the unfathomed ocean that bears to this
day our name.  Ruled we in the Golden Age, our dominion paramount, our
priestly princes companions of the high gods of whom they learned the
Eternal Principles, governing in love and kindness.  Our ships were on
every sea, yea, and in the air above, for thus my fathers in the
morning of Time crossed the tempestuous waters.[1]


[1] Scott-Elliot's "Atlantis" contains an absorbingly interesting
chapter as to the aerial services of the Atlanteans.


"Now only I and some hidden few in far-distant cloud-swept heights are
left of the myriad favoured peoples before came Error, the black magic
of the nether gods by which must mortals perish and the exalted purpose
of the eternal Bright Ones be for ons frustrated....  Of mine own
house were those who, at the mandate of the deathless ones, fared forth
to that chill clime where later roamed Goths and Vandals, almost
themselves brute beasts, lacking Wisdom's torch.  Thence in Time's
fullness came we hither to mankind's cradle.[2]  Our cities rose anew
and our temples reached toward the heavens where now is naught but
desert desolation.  There ruled we long, walking circumspectly in the
great Law.


[2] The finding of the skull and many of the bones of a child of
approximately 60,000 B.C. in a prehistoric deposit forming a camp site
of an early human race, at Mechta-el-Arbi, Algeria, was announced in
May, 1927, by Alonzo W. Pond, director of the Logan African Expedition
of Beloit College, then just returned to the United States.  "An
interesting point which emerges from Professor Raymond Dart's discovery
(of this pre-human skull in Central Africa)," says Professor G. Elliott
Smith, of the University of London, "is that it unqualifiedly supports
Darwin's theory that Africa was probably the original home of the human
family.  I have always inclined to that view, as both of those
unenterprizing relatives of the human family, the gorilla and the
chimpanzee, happen to live in the forests of Africa."


"And whilst we trod as commanded the appointed way, all things to be
desired were ours, immeasurable power and vast possessions, the
treasures of the earth and the keys of knowledge, so that there have
been none like us, children of the gods and kings!

"But in the long march of ages the seeds of foolish pride were sewn,
ripened and spread.  The mandates of the gods were set at naught, their
very titles usurped.  Selfish ambitions wrought steadily for
destruction.  The wrath of the Bright Ones was kindled; and at the last
celestial vengeance fell in so great a flood as to wash clean the
iniquitous earth.  Saved from that death were but a handful in the end
found faithful, with such barbarians as had not received the Light and
were in their ignorance blameless.

"To those who had walked in righteousness remained the master secrets,
to share which few, alas, of the passing generations have been since
found worthy.

"The guardianship of Wisdom was my father's and my father's fathers.
Last of our ancient people, each in his hour long since entered the
Peace of the Silence.  The span of a hundred years and more is now mine
own; and, walking overlong in solitude while men come and go, I weary
and would wed with Death, yet may not claim that precious boon of Rest
while yet the Trust is mine!"

So fantastic a rambling tale I never before had heard; and, while I
could but partly grasp its purport, my thought was that age and
superstitions had turned the poor creature's head.  All races have
their legends of the Flood; this much at least was understandable, but
as to the Ancient Wisdom and much else, I, being little learned, set
down her vapourings for visionary nonsense.  Nor could I see, bringing
myself to issues that pressed for action, wherein her fables concerned
me or the maid.  And this I urged, reminding her of the Princess and
her plight.  What place or part had she in this fanciful history?  Who
was she and where now?  What dangers threatened?  The practical and the
present most concerned us, not myths of a long dead past.  Thus I spoke
bluntly, recalling her to the point.

"Alas, even thou art blind," she answered sadly.  "Nay, hear me out,
then, although unbelieving.  Wherein the Princess is concerned will in
its course appear--thine own part also.  Naught have I spoken lacking
point and purpose.  That keeping in thy mind, I pray give heed."

Once more she paused, searching her recollections, or so I thought.
When she went on, her eyes held unshed tears; her quavering voice
betrayed unguessed emotion.

"I would thou couldst read the letter," she lamented, "for then would
my task be lightened.  It was her mother's message to him who in time
would come--therefore to thee!"

At last something tangible, on which one could take hold!  Nor was I
overmuch surprised; some such conclusion, but informulate, had been
mine while I studied that faded script.

"I cannot with certainty name the language in which it is written,"
said I, getting to my feet, "but I have seen much the same before.
Yes, and in the self-same hand, or memory tricks me.  In Gentil's house
it was.  I doubt not he can translate this.  The stead is near.  If we
make haste..."

Speech failed me abruptly.  She, too, had risen.  Gone was all trace of
tears or womanly weakness.  The cringing mite seemed suddenly
transformed, vibrant with indignation.  I felt myself opposed by a
subtle force against which I could do nothing.  More, too, I both felt
and feared it, counting myself no craven.

"Forever accurst is he!" she almost shrieked.  "For him the gods
reserve their direst punishments.  A recreant knave forsworn on every
hand, through him comes worse than death to all who trust him....  Foul
and unfaithful renegade, his doom is sealed.  Name him not more as thou
loveth life!"

Rage choked her, shaking her withered frame.  I could but stare,
dumbfounded and at sea.  The farmer to me had seemed a quiet, eccentric
sort, inoffensive and well disposed--a weakling, perchance, but in
sooth no villain.

"Thou knowest him not at all, this thrice perjured priest," she broke
in on my thought with her strange prescience.  "Thou seest not to the
black heart, the coward soul.  Harken and judge anew.  This rascal
Russian once was a man of parts, well born, well learned, ridden by
high ambitions.  He gave himself to his Church, and her vows were
snapped as a slender thread.  He gave himself to his country, and
betrayed her.  He took to himself a wife, a fair and fragile flower,
whose life he shattered and whose grave he dug, even as he killed her
soul.  He once had a child----"

My mind leaped to Meisje and my pulses quickened.

"Go on--go on!" I urged.  Her angry eyes met mine.  Again she read my
thought.

"Even so," said she, "but learn further if thou wouldst save thy feet
from stumbling....  A score of years have flown, as time now is
reckoned, since there came hither, where I dwelt with the spirits of my
people, a man, his woman, and their girl-child, the parents footsore
and worn, Death riding close.  It was the noon of summer and all the
parched and blistering veldt gasped under wave on wave of quivering
heat, searing leaf and blade.  The waterholes were turned to dust-dry,
whitened pits, to which came staggering gaunt quagga[3] and
klipspringer,[4] dassie and duiker, lion and leopard, too, ferocity and
fear alike forgotten in common anguish of thirst, to leave their picked
bones together, the aasvogel[5] having feasted.  Only here in my
sanctuary was Nature's life-blood--plenteous water, whispering trees
and waving grass, the air humming with the beat of many wings.  Thus
the gods favour those who forget them not.  Thus was it made plain that
I walk in honour with the lords of earth and sky.


[3] Zebra.

[4] A small rock-jumping antelope, rather like a chamois.

[5] Vultures.


"From the pool I first saw them come, faint and faltering, to where the
stead now smiles and drowses.  Sore angered was I, for this was mine
own place, the abode and the grave of my people, to which none came
unbidden.  Here in the still watches walked the dead of many
generations, communing with the tranquil stars, so the kaffirs
whispered over their evening fires.  Nor was I minded to disturb this
thought, but rather to nurture it.  Sankaeli knew these my hills for
the home of the shadow people, nor would he or his boldest warrior for
all Africa's herds have dared the tabu time had set on cliff and vale.
Twice or thrice in a season I saw this chief, when he bade me to his
kraal, doing me all honour.  Mayhap he sought a charm to shield him
from a foe's assegai or to smooth the course of courtship; perchance he
was vexed by dreams and needs must have me read their meaning.  Or a
favourite wife had fallen sick, or a thief held cattle....  His people
were as their lord, seeking me with gifts in their hands and honey on
their lips when racked by pain or by misfortune beset, trusting in me
much, but fearing more.

"My watchers had forewarned me of the approach of strangers, but so
haggard and spent were they that the word as it reached me was that the
dead walked hither.  This, when I had come down to them, indeed seemed
truth, for they slept as do those that wake not, the child in the
mother's arms....  And I, who in hate had minded swiftly to destroy,
was moved to sudden compassion, in such sore straights were those
hapless creatures, blanched to the hue of chalk, whereat I marvelled.
The man was large and properly proportioned, but weak of nose and chin,
so that, albeit he slept, I knew him futile and timorous, to which as
well his lack of useful gear and their defenceless state bore witness.
The woman, in tattered calico, was fair and fragile, yet had she once
been wondrous beautiful--helpless to serve herself, but strong to
suffer and to comfort others.  Such slender vines often are strangely
strong.

"But it was the babe that filled my woman eyes, a winsome mite of
dimpling, delicious curves, fair as a lily's bloom, a rose in either
cheek, her tumbled hair a crown of rippling gold.  Two wee soft hands
caressed the mother's breast; and I, who had never known the pain and
bliss of womanhood perfected, choked with the longing to press her to
my own."

Here the seeress fell silent, busied with memories, which sensing I
forbore to press her, keen though I was to hear.  Long minutes dragged
as she crouched motionless, her head in her cupped hands.

"It was Sankaeli's jest to send them hither," she at length went on.
"By me had his will been crossed, and in their coming he saw a means to
vex me.  Eager for spoils and power, he had been all for war upon the
outlanders; my bones bespoke disaster for his arms.  One gains not
favour whose words run counter to a ruler's mood.  Yet dared he not
defy the spirits' warning, whereby his head remains upon his neck.  For
that he gives no thanks, as is the way of man, but would return me ill.

"I know not how this wanderer gained his ear and, as he thought, safe
refuge.  The king had wished them dead while he spake them fair; yet
would he have had their blood on other hands than his.  I was to be the
catspaw in his game, and mine the head to fall if vengeance followed.
He must have had a crafty counsellor, who, else I have lost my wits, is
that same ringed snake by whom thou wert shrewdly tricked.  His guile
serves him no more.

"Forsake the place of my people I could not, nor lift the wholesome
fear of the spirit folk that kept from my domain the ill-smelling
blacks.  But for the child I should not have thought twice, but loosed
upon the pair such horrors as must have sent them staggering forth
again, to leave their bleaching bones on the baked veldt.  But who
could visit death on a sleeping babe?  My heart warmed as I watched her
slumber; and when blue eyes opened wide to study me in appraising
puzzlement, the while twin rows of milky teeth showed in an awakening
yawn, my arms went out to her.  And then she smiled, and, chuckling
happily, crept to me--and I was thenceforth her slave.

"But I waste words: I did not harry them forth to perish, but gave them
aid and counsel.  Also such speech I had with their kaffir folk as
bound these to loyal service, whereat their chief marvelled much.  The
man in sooth knows farming.  The stead shaped and grew apace.  Crops
flourished; orchards bloomed and fruited; flocks and herds waxed fat
and multiplied.  The gods prospered their hands and none came to harass
them, for, while they knew it not, it had been spread afar that they
walked in my shadow.  The woman learned to smile, though born to
sorrow.  The child laughed and throve, a butterfly ever a-wing.  Their
sky showed not a cloud.  And yet I read ill omens in the stars, death
in my dreams; while grief on grief was written in the bones.  Wherefore
I guarded close the little maid, and early taught those who served that
she was by the spirits sent and in their care.  And she giving love for
love, contentment filled my days.  The mother, too, when she had
learned to trust, leaned much upon me, herself ill-fitted for homely
tasks and trials.

"So passed two sowings and reapings and naught befell.  Yet ever the
man moved silent and apart, fear mirrored in his face.  Let but the
king be named and panic seized him lacking cause or reason.  To
Sankaeli he sent the pick of herds and flocks, with choicest fruits and
honey, or soft-tanned, bright-dyed skins and deftly fashioned trinkets
for favourite wives.

"Through the third season his melancholy grew, and he was wont to walk
the live-long night like an unquiet ghost.  Then journeyed he forth
himself after great preparation and countless changes of mind, so that
one knew not what was toward from one day to another.  A fourth moon
waned ere we saw him again, returned with great store of goods, for the
conveyance of which many carts and oxen were needed, which had he from
the king.  Thereafter he would spend hour on hour testing his weapons,
albeit no raider threatened and he sought not game.  Words had he for
none except the child, on whom he would gaze for hours, brooding
blackly, the while she romped and chattered.  Or of a sudden he would
crush her so fiercely to him I feared for her tender bones; and then,
putting her from him roughly, stalk wordlessly forth, coming not back
for days.  His thoughts he shared with none, wherefore the woman
grieved.  I did but wait, watchful lest any harm befall my pet.

"Harvest time came and all were in the fields from rise to set of sun,
save only I, the mother, and the maid.  Mid-day had passed and summer's
heat lay heavy.  The stead was wrapped in slumbrous stillness but for
the soothing drone of humming-bird and bee.  Within the farmhouse,
shades drawn, my mistresses slept.  The dogs barked noisily, and, going
forth to still them, I found one of Sankaeli's counsellors had come on
business of his lord.  His word, he said, was for the master's ear; to
him he straightway went.  Naught more saw I of him; nor yet when
evening fell had the Baas returned.  His wife was minded to meet him,
and set forth toward the fields, her dog running before her, barking
for joy of life.  Once did she stop, looking back to blow a kiss from
her white fingers.  Night deepened and she came not.  I watched for
her, the child sleeping in my arms.  Midnight had struck ere hurrying
footsteps sounded and the man strode swiftly past me and to his room.
His face was pale and contorted.  He gave no heed to me nor to the
child....

"I thought the woman dead when presently I found her, outstretched by
the new-planted gums.  Yet did her heart beat, fitfully and weak; and
while I chafed her wrists, her eyelids fluttered open.  Despair was in
her look, and hopeless horror.  Long did she search my face, fighting
for every breath.  The Shadow was plain upon her, and I would have
fetched her man but that her fingers gripped me and she shook her head.

"'This is the end,' she said, so faintly I could but hear, my ear to
the chill lips....  'No, bring him not near to me, and trust him never
more....  Of all inhuman monsters he is most foul.'  Choking, she
ceased, lying so still and wan I thought she had passed the gates.  No
pulse throbbed, and I would have gone to arouse the stead but that her
clutch held fast.  Again her eyes opened slowly; her lips moved.

"'My child--my little one,' she barely breathed.  'Now must you--care
for her--save her, from--her--father.  Traitor to his own flesh.'
Again strength ebbed and she halted, shuddering.  I forced through her
set teeth some strengthening drops that fanned the flickering spark.
'It is the heart,' she whispered.  'Long have I known its weakness.  A
sudden shock--and this day--I heard--I heard....  But time is short.
Run quickly, giving speech to none....  Fetch pen and paper hither.  I
would leave a message.  Nay, woman, I die not till thou comest!  I must
not--will not!'  Her voice trailed off into ominous silence.  Then,
starting up with vigour that amazed, she sternly ordered:

"'Go, Zeete, and be swift!  Life is on thy haste.'

"She seemed in no worse state when I returned.  She had kept the Reaper
waiting by sheer will.

"'Woman, thou art all my hope,' she feebly gasped, swaying in my arms
the while she wrote that which I wouldst thou could read.  'Her most
unnatural father dooms her to worse than death....  Thou must outmatch
him in cunning.  Be deaf to all he saith....  Watch over her, sleeping
and waking....  Be father and mother both, for she will have none but
thee....  Take her away--and quickly....  Hide her, keeping close thy
secret.  Away--away from the stead....  Trust none, till thou findest
one of her own kind and colour serving government....  To him give then
this writing ... and thy trust ... is done.'

"She pressed the paper upon me and fell back.  I closed the unseeing
eyes.  Grey dawn showed ere I regained the stead, none knowing I had
moved therefrom."

Again the tale halted vexingly.  I could but wait till she took up its
thread again.

"Seest thou how hard a task was mine?  I could ask aid of none save the
baboon people, obedient to my will.  That shown to the dying, brooks no
question.  Also was I selfishly minded to keep the child.  The man I
saw little of; our paths crossed seldom.  He was as one distraught,
deep bitten by madness.  Two weeks had flown since the grave claimed
his wife.  It was a moonless night, the stead wrapped in sleep, that he
sought me out, his eyes heavy and bloodshot for lack of rest.

"''Tis said thou art a witch and canst read what time holds in store?'
he harshly challenged.  'Oft have I heard of such devil's magic and I
am minded to put it to the test.  Set out the fittings of thy mummery.
What next will Fate pile on my wretchedness?  See, I have gold!  What
is not done for this yellow god of little men?  Invoke thy spirits and
the fee is thine!'

"Naught answered I, nor held it over-strange he should seek my aid, but
drew from my pouch a handful of knucklebones and cast them upon the
ground, whereon they took form and pattern.  So may those having the
skill read as from thy printed pages.  They fell into the outlines of a
skull, a thrown spear, and a stake ringed round with specks of black
that whirled and eddied in the breeze of night.  These for a space I
scanned, until words came unbidden to my lips:

"'Thy earthly pilgrimage ends here,' I told him, 'where runs the
ancient law that for ill deeds must be atonement made, even with life
itself.  Here thou wilt live beset by phantom fears bred of unquiet
conscience.  Rich thou wilt grow in lands, in cattle, and in that gold
of thine, but find not peace or solace or delight save only in kindly
deeds, for so alone is lightened Error's load.  Twice seven times shall
summer come and go, and thou shalt gaze into thy yawning grave--a shaft
of thine own forging.  Yet empty waits the pit, expectant of thy bones.
In violence comes thy end, by savage men.  Their women spit upon and
taunt thee as, round and round, their brats with laughter turn thee.
And when comes welcome Death, banishing mortal pains, only the birds
shall give thee sepulchre.  Thus speak the Spirits in truth.'

"'Thy spirits are ill-disposed, their judgments harsh,' he sighed when
I had done.  'Thy dire prophecies touch but me, however?  What of the
child?'

"Now had I truly sought to read her page, as since I have not once but
many times.  I must, as thou knowest, have cast the bones anew.  This I
did not, for came to me the thought that I might shape occasion to my
ends.  Wherefore I made pretence of pondering long; and when again I
spake, no guidance had my tongue.  The child, I told him, walked but a
little time in sunshine.

"'And what comes then?' he questioned anxiously.

"I feigned to find the reading over hard, the whilst I gave myself to
hurried thought.  At length the die was cast, for good or ill.

"'The spirits write," I falsely prophesied, 'that ere this moon be
spent she goes to the tree people, returning not!'

"A moment more and I would have unsaid the word.  Had he but looked, he
must have known me for a liar and ashamed.  But he had turned away and
tarried not.  I doubt he fully knew what was foretold, yet on my head
was visited his anger, for I was driven forth ere the next sun had set.
The child was given in care of a kaffir wench, and for days on days I
could but see and guard her by studied stealth.  Her favourite nooks
none knew so well as I, and these I frequented with a great bitch
baboon that carefully was instructed in her task.  It so fell out as I
had thought it would.  The babe was for a moment forgotten at her play,
and when the black girl screamed in wild alarm it was too late.  My
faithful beast had seized the toddling mite and was in flight with her
for our most secret cavern in the cliffs.  There soon she was in my
arms, her fright forgotten in joy of seeing me.

"Search, long and barren, was made in kloof and cave where dwell the
baboon folk.  These one and all he ruthlessly pursued, to butcher
wantonly, wherefore his fields were ravaged and his cattle scattered,
so that again he came to me for counsel lest all he had be lost.  And
I, who had sown in falsehood the seed of Error, ate of the bitter
fruit, my guiltless servants slaughtered whilst my lips were sealed.
Nor could I plead the gods to turn back time and give me my yesterday,
for in my planned deceit lay safety for her who now was more to me than
even the law of Truth.  None thought to seek her in our fastnesses.
Who looks for life and youth in these still places of the forgotten
dead?  There dwelt we, hidden snug, the while she budded and bloomed in
winsome girlhood, so eager and apt of mind it was a boon to teach her.
Now is she ripe in all wisdom whereof I hold the keys--fearless and
just as well--so that throughout the land many kings and warriors hold
her in awe as daughter of the gods.

"The thought to name her my heiress was born of the finding of that
uncommon peltry that she wears.  Sacred it is to priests and vestals of
the Ancient Faith; and when I knew it to have come from the great hills
afar, where sit the Deathless Ones guarding the Master Words, I read it
for a sign that her sending was part of the all-wise plan.  Thereby I
knew my own transgression pardoned, and went forward in strengthened
zeal to fit her against the day when I am no more and she in turn shall
tend the Living flame.  Over-young she is, yet hath she wit and courage
beyond her years--sinless till anger assailed her, as thou didst
witness, bringing, as ever it must, deserved punishment.

"See now how our misdeeds rise up against us to set at naught our
schemes--burst the bright bubble of our self-conceit!  When boastful
pride proclaims the strands of our affairs in our own hands alone, then
are we most the playthings of the fates.  Here had we lived in quietude
and peace, unvexed by humankind, these many years.  My little maid had
come to womanhood, her secret doubly safe since she was mourned as dead
and time had dulled the edge of the father's grief.  Then, in a thrice,
disaster fell full-fledged.  She and he met by tragical mischance, and
instantly there stirred in the breast of each the call of blood to
blood.  No word has he yet spoken--why I know not; but of a surety his
eyes at long last are opened and danger threatens most when I had
thought it past.

"Not from him only: tales have been spun to catch Sankaeli's ear,
wherefore he would feast his dull eyes on the White Witch's beauty.
His people seek her--now near, now far--as though she were a slave to
serve his pleasure!  And, wanting courage themselves to brave the
spirits and storm these halls of death, hither they bring yellow
strangers lacking their wholesome caution, so that each day the double
peril grows.  Thrice hath she all but fallen into their snares; and as
their number swells with the old king's lust, my heart is faint within
me and my servants falter....  Also the time is come to fulfil my
trust.  Henceforth it is for thee to guard the lily maid.  Be faithful,
and the gods reward!"




CHAPTER VIII

THE PRISONER-PRINCESS

Thus she made end, and I, confused and astounded, gave myself up to
thought.  Much now was clear that had before perplexed, yet still
intruded a major mystery: Why had the child been wrested from her
father?  Was the poor mother mad, to trust instead this pigmy of the
wild?  Wherein lay now my duty?  To straightway go to Gentil with his
daughter, or do as Zeete pressed me, speaking with the dead mother's
voice?  Instinct or intuition pleaded her cause; not till I had probed
her reasons would I again put trust in the farmer-recluse.  Meanwhile,
to safeguard Meisje was clearly my part.  That faded letter should go
to Pretoria for translation by the first out-post....

A hideous clamour beyond the massive door broke suddenly on my
thoughts.  Zeete sprang up to throw it wide, and there came tumbling in
a chattering horde of her uncouth beasts, all terrified and many sorely
wounded, their panic plainly pictured.  Then passed swift interchange
of wordless speech, and she turned to me, fierce hate and horror in her
wizened face.

"Quickly, or all is lost!" she tensely urged.  "Sankaeli's crew are
come--their yellow allies with them!  They lay close hidden to take
unawares her guard.  Our Princess they bear to the black king's
kraal----"

I waited for no more, but, looking to my weapons, was on my feet.  She
took from a curious cabinet her little glowing wand and (Nano
scrambling awkwardly ahead to scout the way) led forth through the
painted corridor, the other blood-spattered beasts crowding upon her
heels.

"Twenty there are, no less," she whispered as we ran.  "None must
escape....  Happily the king hath sworn his wrath should harm befall
her."

I had no breath to answer.  That tenuous trail was never meant for
human foot.  Scant inches it showed, skirting precipitous heights, no
buckspoor ever so aerial or erratic.  Yet the little doctress skimmed
it lightly, sure-footed as her baboon friends, alike indifferent to the
dizzy deeps ever yawning below.  One single mis-step ...  But the pace
left no time either for thought or caution.  A hundred nightmare
horrors each moment merged, yet I felt no fear--rather a driving urge
that called ever for greater speed, laughing at breakneck risks.

Thus, when we were suddenly come to a deep and densely-wooded donga,
and Zeete and her brutes took instantly to the over-arching trees, I
likewise made no pause, but, gripping a far-flung bough, swung out into
empty space and chuckled jubilant at being first on the farther bank.
There, waiting for them to cross, I cast about for the onward spoor,
vexed to discern no sign.  The others joining me seemed to read at a
glance signposts in the tangled forest, and pressed on headlong through
the unbroken bush that tore my clothes to tatters and so lashed face
and hands that when presently we halted, the while our wise old Nano
tested the mountain air with twitching nostrils, I was drenched with
bloody sweat.

Again came hurried conference in those harsh, throaty gutturals that
now perforce I knew for primitive speech, intelligible to the sorceress
at least; and she, interpreting, said that the raiding _impi_[1] but
lately had passed in haste.  Old Nano melted at once into the brush,
and we went on, taking each step with care lest snapping of branch or
twig betray our presence.  Thus passed an hour of toilsome climbing and
perilous descents in which we gained, perhaps, a quarter-mile, when,
noiseless as he had gone, our hairy scout returned and forthwith our
course was reshaped for higher ground.  Thence we worked forward to a
well-bushed kranz falling sharply to a small open glade, from which
mounted a thin spiral of bluish smoke.


[1] Armed body of natives.


Toward this we crept with heightened caution, and there came in view
the fire itself, enclosed in a loose-built schans round which were
sprawled eight or ten kaffir fighting men, with three in ragged blue,
by which I knew them as being from the mines.  Other blacks busied
themselves about the cooking-pots, and four were posted as watchers
against surprise.  Eighteen in all I counted, nor were all in
sight--too heavy odds to venture direct attack.  Little hope had I of
further aid from our docile beasts that even then were whimpering with
fright; while Zeete, aged and unarmed, was more like to be an added
care than of any service where force, not craft, must tell.

Strain sight as I could, no glimpse could I gain of Meisje, and my
heart sank lest we had come too late.  Not till that torturing moment
had I really known how much I loved her; and with that knowledge, grief
consumed me which quickly turned to rage.  Her villainous captors
should at least pay dearly.  The world swam red before me, and I would
have dashed forth foolishly to deal and welcome death had not a hand
clutched firmly at my shoulder and Zeete's unshaken voice given new
life to hope.

"The maid, I doubt not, is held beyond the thorn bush, for there, seest
thou, a double guard is set?  They guess not we are here; thus much is
gained.  Now shall these black dogs and yellow taste of the spirits'
vengeance....  Make thou no move or sound, befall what may.  I go to
bring her hither and to punish!"

Such certitude was hers I could not doubt some cunning plan was shaping
in her brain; and knowing well how secretly she could move, I did but
nod agreement to her will.  I would have pressed knife or revolver on
her, seeing her weaponless, whereat she smiled and pushed them from her.

"Nay, I need not such tools," she whispered simply.  "Watch thou and
mark the justice of the gods."

She signed to Nano, and he, with other of our baboons, stole away, to
be swallowed instantly by the bush; and when I turned again to speak to
her, she, too, had vanished, silent as a shadow.  I settled then to
watch with pounding heart, straining my sight to pierce the clump of
thorn.  The warlike preparations of the camp amazed me; on that I
puzzled much....  Minutes crawled leaden-footed.  The shadows
lengthened on the mountain-side.  The birds forgot their panic and
twittered happily in the nearer trees; and from a fallen banyan, a
_koorhaan_[2] eyed me inquisitively and chattered his poor opinion of
intruders.


[2] Bustard; literally Scolding-cock.


I had watched and waited ages, it seemed, in growing torment of
inactivity, when from the matted jungle beyond came crashing of
underbrush, as though someone were in headlong haste.  My first thought
was that others of their ilk were joining the abductors, but such would
surely move less noisily.  The camp, too, buzzed into action,
betokening surprise and apprehension.  Warriors seized their arms and
sank suddenly into the earth, adept in self-concealment.  Zeete it
could not be, for open ground intruded, not to be crossed unseen.  No
longer could I sit idly by, and, all eyes luckily being upon the bush,
I ran, crouched low, for such scant cover as promised nearer view of
that patch of thorn.  This, happily, I gained, winded but undiscovered,
and dropping to hands and knees, crawled forward to where I could
discern what there went on.

The witch had guessed aright.  Meisje was there, a prisoner but
unharmed, to my vast relief.  No trembling, affrighted captive, she
stood proudly erect, her hands bound at her back, smiling indifferent
contempt of those who held her.  Four guards there were, but as I
studied how they might best be dealt with, one dashed away to join his
ambushed comrades.  But three left!  Such odds were welcome, yet must
there be no sound.  A shot, and they would buzz like bees about me, my
own fate sealed, and hers.  Knife it would have to be, both swift and
sure, taking them one by one.  But how, while time availed?  It grew
dusk.  Dare I wait for the shield of darkness?  If Zeete were at hand,
her fertile brain might hatch some cunning plan to take them unawares.
What had become of her?  Scant yards away the bushes stirred.  I
stared; something there moved!  Mo enemy, else there were no need for
stealth.  A gaunt prehensile hand parted the sheltering leafage.  I
caught a fleeting glimpse of Zeete's face, placid and confident.

At once I started to creep toward her, when softly she slipped from
cover, prone on the ground, seeming to glide with a serpent's
fluid-ease towards the thorn clump, the prisoner, and the unwitting
guards.  What scheme was in her mind I could not guess.  Faintly a
cricket chirped in the short grass through which she squirmed and
twisted, all but invisible even to me, who knew that she was there.

Then I heard Meisje speaking--saw the guards turn towards her, their
eyes intent, their scarred and furrowed faces clouding darkly.  What
she was saying I could not conjecture, but in her pose was queenly
dignity; her voice rang out disdainfully, as though she spoke from a
throne to cringing slaves.  Her steady eyes held theirs compellingly,
so that when Zeete uprose, spectrelike, so close behind one, she might
have touched him, the guards still remained oblivious.

I looked to see a knife flash in her hand.  Instead it held that little
ancient wand, the ruby tip mysteriously aglow.  It traced an arc of
fire behind the muscled back, and forthwith the man staggered
drunkenly, shaken as with an ague, and then, crumpling at the knees,
fell soundlessly.  Instinctively I knew that he was dead.

Even as he sank to earth the wand again was waved; another collapsed,
spinning grotesquely as he went down, and the last of them turned
hastily, too late awakened to impending peril.  The movement brought
him face to face with Death's wizened messenger.  Once more her baton
flashed, and, whether it was because he was farther away I know not, he
swayed, but kept his feet, as, with a strangled sob, he clapped both
hands to his affrighted eyes.

It was as though a lightning stroke had seared but failed to kill.

Events marched quickly in the next few seconds.  One flashing
knife-stroke severed Meisje's bonds.  A baboon barked excitedly from
the thick brush where but a moment before I had watched from cover.
The Princess ran lightly thither, giving me a smile that set my pulses
pounding.  Zeete spoke shortly to the shaken guard, who shrank from her
in terror undisguised.  She beckoned me to her side.

"Bind me this dog," she said.  "He goes back with us"; and as I slipped
the cuffs upon his wrists, she harshly urged him forward.  Not once did
we slacken pace until we had regained the kranz where she had left me.
From there we saw the rude camp hastily deserted, the baffled warriors
one by one returning to stare bewilderedly at the dead but unwounded
men, then bolt precipitately, leaving even weapons where they lay.  Our
prisoner gave no trouble.  He moved as he was bade, in ashen fear, as
though to waiting death, which was indeed his thought.

The moon had fully risen, flooding the forest with shifting shadows ere
we returned to the cave palace; and while we followed no man-made path
on the dizzy heights, I gave no thought to their danger, for I trod on
air.  Meisje kept close to me, even contriving at times to walk by my
side, her hand snuggled in mine.  The friendly baboons romped joyously
ahead, as if they also knew we came home in triumph.

Much more regard I had for the ugly creatures when Zeete told me how
they had staged the commotion in the adjacent bush to so command
attention from the blacks that we might risk a rescue.

My Golden Girl had also played well her part, for her quick ear had
caught the witch's signal that I had thought no more than an insect's
chirp; and instantly she had claimed and held attention of her guards
while we crept up unseen.




CHAPTER IX

THE JUSTICE OF THE GODS

Ere we had reached the caves the moon rode low, a blood-red scimitar
hung just above the summit of the range.  The night was still and
cloudless, yet of the myriad stars but seven shone like jewels in the
velvet sky.  One barely topped the horizon of the hills, and this one
Zeete named for the crafty king, in its decline portent of coming
death.  The moon presaged red war, so said the signs; and, as it seemed
confirmatory, the hills of a sudden echoed the throb of tom-toms--a
dull and distant booming answered by thunderous drums nearer at hand.

"The spear even now is flung," Meisje exclaimed, stopping to listen.
"Perchance this surly fellow knoweth what goes forward?"

She halted our glooming captive and words passed.

"They dance at Sankaeli's kraal with certain Bhagwan to-day come from
Bambata's country," said the sorceress.  "At last the old king chances
war, despite my counsel.  Soon shall his wives be widows."

Since feast and dance would find no Sankaeli missing, we hastened on
with less anxiety, in silence broken only by the insistent drum.  A
single deep sonorous note, full-throated from the hollow earth itself,
it came at intervals exactly spaced, to be repeated, fainter and
fainter still, by the reverberent hills--monotonous, inexorable,
beating upon the brain.

Meisje now took the lead, light-footed, confident, with words for none,
withdrawn into the citadel of her thoughts.  I strove to sound her mind.

"It is the drum," she whispered.  "It calls--it calls....  Thou couldst
not understand, being of different blood."

She did not know, then!  She still believed herself kin to the little
Bushwoman!  Zeete had shared her secret with me alone!  I pondered the
complex problem as we pushed on.  What was my course to be?  No
interruption came, only the pulsing of that calling drum.  One thing
alone was certain: she must be placed in safety without delay.  But
where?  No answer yet had offered when the cavern loomed darkly before
us.

      *      *      *      *      *

That was a night of nights, my whole life's happiest!  We had the
palace chamber to our two selves; for, having thanked her gods, Zeete
had again set forth, whither she did not say.  In sweet companionship
the golden hours raced.  Was ever mortal maid for love so fashioned, so
rarely beautiful, yet all unspoiled!  Wise far beyond her years, still
was she all unlearned in social tricks, pretences, and deceits; withal
a merry, teasing puss, setting no little value upon herself.  Frankly
she owned her love, but would be wooed; being wooed, she would be
quickly wed.  And, as is her sex's way, she must be told again and yet
again how much beloved she was.

Did I in very truth find her so fair?  What did I mean by saying her
lips were honey?  Nay, words were hollow--she would instead be shown!
Why should we not here live out our lives together?  Where lay my home,
and truly did not wives wait in my kraal, nor slaves, serving in hut
and field?  How many cattle were within my _scherm_[1]? ... Funny,
isn't it, how little below the surface civilized woman remains the
savage?


[1] A protection of brush and trees against wild animals.


Cattle I must have, naturally!  That brought a question voiced with shy
hesitancy: How many beasts was it in my mind to give for her?

I feigned confusion.  Being but newly come to it, how could I yet know
her country's ways?  What was a proper price?

On that she studied long, regarding me with quizzical concern....
Fifty fat cows surely would not be over-much, for was she not a
chieftainess, young and not ill-favoured? ... Fifty, at least, she
thought....

But when, to tease, I doubtfully shook my head, blue eyes puckered
anxiously.

"Not fifty, then, lord--forty were ample," she amended quickly.  Had I
not sworn she was all the world to me?  Was she not apt in household
arts and curing of wounds and fevers--tutored in wisdom also? ... Yet
forty would indeed be two score, and who had need for more than a score
of both toes and fingers?  Twenty should well suffice! ... Ten she had
of her own, she suddenly bethought; they should count as mine!  She
laughed in sheer delight, claiming a kiss in payment.

How could I lightly jest with one so sweet?  Dear Miss Simplicity!  Who
or what was I to claim such maiden faith?  Me she had known only; what
was to happen when other and better men swarmed round her like flies
about a honeypot?  The thought was vinegar.  She saw me scowl and
blamed herself unjustly as the cause.  And when I sought to make the
problem plain, she laid restraining fingers on my lips.

"Nay, lover mine, such are but empty words," she gently chided.  "If in
this world of thine be men like unto gods in wisdom as in strength, yet
art thou only mine, as I am thine.  Ever it shall be so.  The gods have
said that I shall mate with thee--wherefore thy doubts?"

She would have no more.  Nor was I over-minded to press the matter,
resolved instead to spare her vain regrets.  She should go to Pretoria
till the skies had cleared.  There she would be quite safe.  There,
too, were schools for her education, English, of course, included.  She
listened, wide-eyed and piquantly perplexed.

"I like it not," she faltered.  "But thy word is indeed my law.  Had I
my will I should bide here with thee, sharing both sweet and bitter.
This storm will pass; yet whilst it blows I would be with my lord.
Also might I not serve him?  None knows this land so well, save only
grand-dame!  Nor do my words lack weight with certain kings....  I
would indeed learn thy speech, but from thy lips."

Hard it was to deny her coaxing, yet I had to be firm.  Why we should
load ourselves with countless social shackles of our own forging was
not for me to say.  I could but tell her thus and so did my gods
decree.  Whereat she pouted, holding such gods in very light esteem.

"Will there be other maids at these dull schools of thine?" she
questioned, yielding obedience.  "And must I suffer anew the cold and
hunger, murmuring not?"

That such was not our custom was some scant comfort.  Again she smiled.
Would I be sure often to come to her, so she might live counting the
empty days?  How long must she be banished from my side?

Night waned.  Time fled unheeded in sweet content that each had now the
other.  Dawn came unseen, Zeete with it.  Her face proclaimed ill news.

Sankaeli's fighting men were come in numbers.  Already the more
adventurous trod the ancient way.  Emboldened by the example of the
Chinese, and walking in mounting fear of the old king's threats, they
ventured the dread cave's mouth, but halted there, still fearful of the
unseen and the unknown.  Nano's troops were scattered in dismay.  We
now must count upon ourselves alone....  There was a secret way by
which I might contrive escape, taking the Princess with me.

"More than her life is sought," she added anxiously.  "Her care now is
thine, remember!"

"No time to lose, then," I urged, impatient of delay.  "Jean must carry
double.  Once on the track we should easily make the Post."

Of this she was not so sure.

"Had day not come it were less hazardous," she pointed out.  "Their
eyes are many and their ears are sharp.  Thou couldst not pass unseen.
Perchance I may contrive to draw them hence, so when night's curtain
falls thou canst win through.  Darkness must be thy friend."

The long day wore, dragging its chain of hours.  We ate
perfunctorily--caught snatches of fitful sleep--laid plans--prepared
for flight....  The palace glories palled.  What prisoned splendours
can match the golden sunshine and pearly clouds sailing a sapphire sky?

Noon past, Zeete sallied forth in quest of news, not to return till
evening, her shadow Nano again with her.  She brought scant tidings:
the blacks were in great number at the painted hall, but there they
halted still.  In all the higher hills look-outs were posted.
Conditions otherwise were little changed.  We were besieged--invested
on all sides.

"A yellow one sought closer knowledge of our spirits," she added
grimly--"nor was he disappointed....  We cast the carrion forth for
them to think upon."

No more she said till she had taken food.  Then she must deck herself
in the fantastic trappings of her cult--snakeskins and pouch of bones,
broad bands of copper on her skinny shanks, necklace of bladders strung
upon a cord[2]--the magic wand, of course.  She even had found for
herself another adder, which coiled about her arm, to my distaste.


[2] Characteristic equipment of African witch doctors and
witch-doctresses.


"Those that I meet must not forget my craft," said she.  "We go now to
work justice.  That spearman shall be our witness.  For that his life
was spared.  It is in my mind to set him free that he may pour a tale
in his chieftain's ear.  I doubt it will overplease the two-faced king."

Our captive had been cast in a tiny cave, more like a cistern, dismal
and dark and damp.  No watch was set over him; he needed none, fast
bound to a smooth-worn post.  He seemed to count himself already dead,
staring with glassy eyes as we drew near.  No question did he ask, nor
sue for mercy, but strode forth boldly when his bonds were loosed.  He
would at least die well; no craven he, to give the dog his due.  The
strangeness of his comrades' taking off, not normal dread of death, had
shaken his stoicism.  Alone, in darkness, he had pulled himself
together.  He followed the windings of the sombre tunnel as bidden, his
head held high, speaking no word.

The ancient amphitheatre proved our goal, and this we gained soon after
darkness fell.  Roofed by the starless sky, the awesome place was
weirdly lighted by that whirling and shifting shaft of sulphurous
vapour that rose from the yawning pit.  Smoke it was not, nor
steam--rather a faintly bluish luminous mist giving to all about the
hue of death.  In college days we used sometimes to make what we called
a ghost light giving much the same effect, by pouring alcohol on a bowl
of salt, the spirit burning with a sickly flame.

By this uncanny gleam we four paced forward, the little Saab[3]
leading, the kaffir next, walking less arrogantly but still maintaining
a courageous front.  Within the girdling altars formed an ellipse, in
length at least a furlong, level and very hard beneath the foot.  At
either end was raised a massive throne fashioned of huge blocks of
granite, the phosphorescent column equidistant between.  Upright it
reared itself from the black void, into which hewn steps led down.  In
the pallid, pulsating light itself was lost to view at its middle a
narrow wall or causeway bridging the stygian well from side to side, so
slight it showed as a mere thread of grey spanning inky emptiness.  At
either end bulked solid platforms, like all else of stone, so large
they might together have held a troop of horse.


[3] Saab or Saan, synonymous for Bushman.


Thrice did we make the circuit of that vast court, to halt at the upper
end, above which hung poised in air a single brilliant star.  Beneath
it loomed one of the rude chairs of state, imposing in its primitive
strength of line.  To this Meisje would have me mount and seat myself;
she had, she said, a part herself to play in what went forward, which I
could better view from this post of vantage.  And when I would have
urged her to remain, she stopped me with a swift love-radiant smile,
whispering assurance of her safety.

"Besides, it would grieve the grandmother," she added, soft lips
brushing my cheek.  "So soon she loses me, dear one--and thou wilt have
me alway!"

Mounting the moss-covered steps, it came to me how Zeete had spoken of
some sort of trial, or so I had sensed the purport of her words.  What
form this was to take I could not guess--some other fantastic rite of
long dead times I fancied, our prisoner by it, perhaps, to learn Fear's
chill.  As he was to go free, I was content that matters take their
course.  Whatever wizardry was planned, it would have place and purpose
in Zeete's schemes.

Scarce had I climbed to my lofty seat than she had left our captive,
bound afresh, on one of those great stands where ended the shadowy
bridge.  To my amaze a second figure almost at once appeared on the
companion platform opposite, thrust forward by unseen hands, to sink
there limp and inert as an empty sack.  A moment thus he lay, then
stealthily raised his head and peered about.  I knew him straightway
for that same tricky counsellor who had sought my life and by his
tale-bearing put our Princess in peril--him that I last had seen in
headlong flight.

Scant time I had to puzzle on how he had come there, for faintly there
stole upon the air hushed strains of ethereal music, sonorous and
sweet, as though a distant mighty organ answered a master's touch.  It
sang and sobbed, thundered a triumphal pan, sank to a dulcet whisper,
ebbed and flowed--a symphony of the melodic world of Nature: crash of
surging surf, caressing winds sweeping the many strings of tree-top
harps, singing of sunny streams, matin hymn of birds, the myriad little
voices of tranquil night![4]


[4] The Bushmen were accounted the most advanced of any African race in
the sister arts of music and dancing.


Entranced, I listened, seeking in vain to fix the source of the
majestic chords; and, as the tides of harmony rose and fell, Zeete on
one side, Meisje on the other, were slowly traversing that fragile
causeway towards the tremulous pillar of wintry light.

They did not pass from view, the inner ends of the aerial pathway being
gained, but stood at left and right of the translucent shaft,
contrasting statues in creamy marble and dull ebony--vestals of Light
and Darkness, Day and Night, Beauty and Ugliness, Love and Hate, Good
and Evil!  Together they made obeisance to East and West, the womb of
frail mortality and its tomb, Alpha and Omega--invoking the secret
forces of Earth, Air and Sea, while the celestial music throbbed and
pulsed, sank shade by shade, and melted into silence.

High, then, and shrill, the reedy voice of the tiny prophetess was
raised, piercing the unearthly stillness in a hypnotic chant, in time
with which the two drew nearer to the mystic light and flung to the
quivering column handfuls of golden dust.  This being absorbed in that
luminous fountain, a faint, delicious perfume stole upon the senses.
The swaying mist lifted higher and yet higher, grew and spread,
circling, whirling, eddying, to become a great cloud of ever-changing
colour, now rose, now saffron, the blue of Delhi turquoise, royal
topaz.  It flooded all, semi-diaphanous, scarce man-height above the
earth, to billow in drifts of kaleidoscopic hues and patterns, invading
every nook and crevice back to the encircling hills.

Slowly the soft radiance melted in upper air; the stupendous court was
drenched in tropic sunshine, and what had seemed delusion bred of the
rainbow mist stood out distinct in the clear light of day: the colossal
amphitheatre, rising tier by tier, no more a crumbling monument of the
buried past, but a nobly proportioned structure bedecked for festival
and peopled by an innumerable multitude, the crowded terraces gay with
fluttering banners and silken purple and crimson hangings, agleam with
the brave trappings of beauty and panoply of rank--rare fabrics of
vivid tints, lustrous jewels, sheen of dazzling armour, stalwart
soldiery at their posts, the atmosphere surcharged with eager life and
tense expectancy, all eyes fixed upon the black-paved court within the
chain of altars.

These, too, no more were mere mouldering mounds of crumbling stone, but
stunned the eye, gleaming like new-fallen snow in the blaze of
sunlight, attended by battalions of white-robed priests with gold and
silver ceremonial vessels and rhythmically swinging censers, while
flower-decked neophytes, both youths and maidens, divinely fair,
performed their sacred dance.  Altars themselves were heaped with
tokens of a bounteous harvest and a prosperous people--luscious and
fragrant fruits, bursting sheaves of golden grain, the unblemished best
of herds and flocks, treasure of gold and gems, ivory and peacock
plumes, companies of sturdy slaves, the spoil of martial prowess.
Curling wisps of smoke from countless braziers impinged on the crystal
air.

Yet silence over all!  The hush of waiting!

I also looked toward the yawning pit, almost alone unchanged in the
strange transformation for which little more than a breathing-space had
sufficed: the leprous light had become a lambent flame piercing the
azure sky.  This living fire rose midway from the frail causeway, which
now I saw had a protective balustrade, rounded and very dark, its
close-spaced supports fashioned like serpents with upraised heads.  The
solid plateaux to which the structure stretched on north and south were
filled with great barred cages that might well hold the most savage
beasts; and forth and back before these paced Ethiopian guards with
leathern shields and bronze-tipped spears, stalwart and seasoned men.

Straining to see beyond the barriers of these bars I, strangely, was
not surprised that intervening objects were no impediment to my
questing eyes.  The cells, save two, were empty.  In one, Sankaeli's
intriguing vizier cowered, whimpering and affrighted, a loathly thing
on which a passing sentry turned to spit.  The other tenanted cage
contained our kaffir captive, erect, alert, his gnarled fingers
gripping the bars, through which he peered with lively curiosity but no
fear.

A wave of movement swept the multitude.  The guards became immobile,
shields upraised in salute.  The ponderous doors swung wide.  Our black
stalked forth, to gaze unwinking at the sun, yawning ostentatiously.
The other they dragged abjectly to the open.  The twain were yoked
together and marched by men-at-arms to the foot of the further throne.
To this I lifted my eyes--and saw Her, my Princess of the Pool, seated
in robes of splendour ablaze with priceless jewels, a diadem on her
brow, surrounded by lords and ladies, accepting graciously.  but
proudly as of right, the homage of her people!

Fair-skinned were those about her, with flowing tresses the colour of
ripened corn--tall and imposing men; slender, graceful women.  It might
have been an ancient British or a Viking court.  Only the attendant
servitors were blacks, true children of Mother Africa, Bushmen or
Hottentots.  Dwarfs, all the Saan were, almost monstrosities, with
hollow backs and enormous protuberant paunches.  Their heads without
exception lacked the kinky wool that ever marks the negro; straight
hair in little isolated tufts or patches dotted their shining
scalps.[5]  And some there were having the heads of beasts[6]--gorilla,
ape and baboon, lion and antelope, like which they moved with such
mimetic art I was at first confounded.  The masks they wore were
fashioned with infinite care and must have been fitted with ingenious
springs and wires by which ears, eyes and mouths were made to move
realistically.  Small wonder their cunning doctors can so delude the
credulous and superstitious blacks.


[5] The physical characteristics of the but recently extinct Bushmen
are indicated with curious accuracy, as confirmed by Livingstone,
Barrow's "South Africa," and Baines, "Explorations."

[6] Many of the Bushman petroglyphs depict humans with antelope heads,
and possibly this characteristic of Egyptian art was derived from these.


Next to the radiant Princess, one of these pigmy maskers held my gaze.
There seemed about her something indefinitely familiar, yet elusive.
Magician of high rank she appeared to be, for she held place of honour
near the throne, plainly much favoured by her queenly mistress.  The
Royal One graciously bent to listen when she spoke; and then I saw the
adder upon her arm; the snakeskins and the witch's pouch with which
Zeete had decked herself when we set forth!

The prisoners prostrated themselves beneath the throne, while one, who
must have been a scribe, for he held a scroll, seemingly read
therefrom, though I heard no voice.  And then, in flute-like tones, the
Princess spoke, each word a pearl cast on the sea of silence:

"It is for the gods to judge; I am but mortal.  If Truth ye speak,
nothing have ye to fear.  Into Truth's ever-living flame thy words are
cast.  Follow, then, to thy justification or thy doom if falsehood be
on thy lips.  _Tread thou the bridge_!  Naught can befall thee if thy
heart be clean....  I have spoken.  Go!"

At once the guards sprang forward to march them back to the stations
whence stretched the Spans of Justice to the Light.  There for an
instant they stood--the favourite of his king fearful and panic-bitten;
the kaffir whom we had seized soldierly straight, facing with hopeful
confidence the living fire.  I watched as he set forth, intent upon his
goal, and saw with horror that what I had taken for a protective
handrail was an unbroken line of mighty mambas, their swaying heads,
with cruelly glittering eyes, menacing every foot of the causeway's
length.

Sankaeli's headman saw them even as I, and with a shriek of terror
leaped to the court below, thence to plunge headlong down to the
looming pit, from which almost at once came harshly chorused barking,
bestially jubilant....  The kaffir, scathless, passed into the Flame!

My nerves were strained to snapping, my forehead dripping sweat.  I
passed my handkerchief across my face--_and all had gone_!  Black night
was come again.  The people and the pageantry had passed.  Chill winds
swept the deserted altars, but heaps of age-weathered stone, scant,
stunted bushes rooted in their gaping cracks....  I was alone in that
drear, haunted spot.  Heralds of coming dawn showed in the eastern
sky....

A touch on my shoulder, light as thistledown, caused me to quickly
turn.  Meisje was standing there in her beads and moocha, Zeete with
her, the sorceress also as I had always known her.  Words tumbled from
my lips, shaping themselves as questions, whereat the Bushwoman grinned
toothlessly.

"Thou must have soundly slept and the gods sent dreams," she dryly
said.  "Night is far spent.  We must return in haste."

Silent I followed as they went down the crumbling steps....  Truly I
must have dreamed?  Yet impulse, like a magnet, drew me to where those
other steps descended to the deeps whence rose (shrunken to a wraith of
mist) the Flame of Truth....  I gained the chasm's verge and gazed
therein....

Far, far below stretched a dark cavern of indefinite size, to which
some pallid secret fire gave scant illumination, with grotesque
shifting shapes like drifting shadows, behind and around and about
which on every side the murky air was alive with fireflies....  I
strove to sound the shadows with my eyes, and saw that these same
fireflies were in fact the teeth and eyeballs of a great company of
baboons, glistening whitely in the enveloping gloom--while in the very
centre of the huge hall of horrors chattering hairy brutes pushed round
and round the corpse of Sankaeli's man, _impaled on a needle-sharp
stalagmite_![7]


[7] It has been suggested that thus was first suggested this South
African form of torture and death.




CHAPTER X

THE SACRAMENT OF THE SERPENT

Still in a daze, I heard Meisje's call--anxiously questioning.  Where
was I?  Was aught amiss?

Mechanically I answered, rejoining them hurriedly.  Zeete's eyes
searched my face and I mumbled that I had but stopped to lace a boot.

"Hast thou, then, not yet learned that Truth were best?" she asked
reproachfully.

"How can one say what is the truth and what but trickery?" I spoke my
thought.  My mind was in confusion.  The picture of that imposing
pageantry held.  I knew I had not slept; it could have been no dream;
and, had it been, how came the king's headman there where I had seen
him plunge in his consuming terror, dead to make sport for beasts? ...
There was some method in the Saab's madness!  Hamlet was right: more
things there are in earth and heaven than our philosophy grasps....
When Meisje spoke I started, expecting almost to see her still royally
arrayed, princes and slaves about her.

"All peoples have some wisdom of their own," she gravely said.  "I
marvel much at the magic of thy gods."

"Nor should I have been vexed with thee," Zeete broke in contritely.
"Mine was the fault, not thine.  In time, if thou wilt but see, much
will be plain that now is beyond thy ken."

"But that which I _did_ see--this place in all its pomp--as doubtless
it once was in the long ago?..."

"Thou couldst not yet understand," she interrupted.  "Nor is this time
or place for teaching.  How did the Hyperboreans walk upon the air?
How is it that in Hinde a boy climbs to the clouds by a reimpje cast
upward? ... Dawn comes.  We must make haste."

That we might see how matters stood at the Hall of Paintings, we took
the open trail skirting the higher cliffs, narrow and hazardous save
for clambering beasts.  Yet we made progress, for it was one familiar
to their feet, and their indifference gave me confidence I should
otherwise have lacked.  Soon I, too, trod the path with unconcern, and
would have it that the women fall behind till I had seen that no danger
threatened.  Thus it was I walked alone, the sun at its height, when I
found the kaffir--or he found me.

A faint call from a near pinnacle had halted me; Zeete had spoken of
watchers upon the peaks.  From the scant cover of a cliffside rock I
made out a moving figure that soon showed as a running black.  Fast he
came on to where I waited with revolver ready, but before he was yet in
range his empty hands were upflung in sign of peace.  His sort have the
eyes of eagles.  Not till he was close did I know him for our late
captive.

Panting, he knelt to place my booted foot upon his head.

"How now?" I questioned.  "Whither goest thou, and whence come?"

From _pezulu_[1] he had seen us--the white inkosikaas, the witch-woman
and me--treading the path of death.  He came in haste as _umganaam_,[2]
for at the trail-head men lay hid to take my life and seize again the
"Bride of the Sun."


[1] Above.

[2] "My friend."


But was not he himself one of them? I demanded.  Had he not part in
stealing the fair Princess but two suns gone?  Did we not find him
watching lest she escape?

Nothing did he deny.  He had in truth earned death, he frankly owned.
But--he did but obey.  ("Orders is orders"--he had me there!)  The
"Glorious One" had said his was not the fault.  And she had spared his
life, setting his feet upon the way of Truth to Freedom--casting a
spell upon the poison people so that they harmed him not!

_So he had seen them, too--those writhing horrors--and doubtless all
else, as I had!_  Though how did that shorten the road of mysteries?

He had, he said, told Sankaeli's people of what we both had seen--that
dazzling court, its queenly ruler, her many slaves and giant
fighting-men.  These, most of all, had held his warrior eyes....  His
friends, even his brothers, had forthwith drawn from him, accounting
him bewitched.  He went now to plead for place in the Bright One's
service.

Useless to bandy words when danger pressed.  I turned and back-trailed,
with him trotting at my heels.  His news was quickly told when we were
met.

"Thou hast done well," said the Princess kindly and in her manner still
was royalty.  "We take thee in our service.  Attend thou upon my
lord"--and she smiled on me.  "His word is now thy law and his life thy
care!"

Zeete had gone in haste to prove his tale.  It seemed that in a moment
she was back.  He had indeed spoken truth.  The flower of Sankaeli's
warriors barred our way.

"Yet, knowing where and how the trap be set, fools were we to enter
it," she ended.  "The path of the hidden kloof runs not far hence.  We
still may gain it, with favour of the gods.  Masselene and I go to the
lily pool, where safety lies.  Stay thou somewhat behind, lest any
follow.  Then seek the gallery--thou knowest where.  Nano will wait
thee there."

A hasty word to the black and they were gone.  He turned to me, his
shield upon his arm, his face alight and eager.

"The trek is short, n'Koos, but let thy feet have eyes....  Perchance
we may come upon them unawares?"

Truly the distance was nothing, but it was almost sheer descent, with
little footing and precarious holds, the straggling clumps of stunted
bush snapping at a touch or pulling out by the roots.  One of those
mountaineering chaps who prefer a difficult "chimney" to decent trail
might have found it to his taste.  I've no Alpinist blood; that sliding
scramble was to me a nightmare.  Luckily it was quickly over.  We
gained a point above the cavern's mouth whence we could see the trail
like a long thin crack along the face of the kranz, appearing and
disappearing as it twined and twisted crazily upward.

We made it but just in time, too, for, as we got our wind, two
doll-like figures showed below, lost to sight as the path curved
inward.  Sankaeli's men had eyes as keen as ours; we heard their
exultant shouts and saw them dash forward in swift pursuit.  I counted
twenty spearsmen in the pack.  Had we been on the trail ourselves,
numbers there would have mattered little, for they needs must have come
at us single file.

But they were off like eager hounds unleashed.  Our only hope to head
them was by taking again to the heights, trusting to find a short cut.
To scale those frowning cliffs seemed sheer impossibility.  Yet,
clutching and clawing, slipping and sliding, on all fours like our
simian ancestors, digging in with torn and bleeding fingers, hanging on
by the eyelashes as it were, somehow we managed it.  Just once I
thought it was "Last Post" for me.  If strong black fingers hadn't
gripped my hair, I'd have smashed for a certainty on the rocks below.

"Good boy!" I panted, as I found fresh footing.  "That was a near
thing!"

He grinned good-humouredly.

"The inkosikaas gave me care of thee," he chuckled, "but thou art
over-heavy long to hold."

We made our cut across as the first of their runners showed.  My man
was for slipping down and giving immediate battle on that thin ribbon
of road.  I had a better thought, as he agreed.  Rocks and stones
dropping from above are disconcerting and discouraging, very,
especially when they come as a complete surprise.  Attention for the
moment shifted to us.  At once they scattered.  A few began to climb,
seemingly with but little liking for the job.  If we had had only
ourselves to think of, they would have given us small concern.  But
even as we slipped and scrambled down, runners went bounding up the
trail.  Three got by for all our haste.  Others followed close.  The
range was over-long for small arms, but, straight down and taking care
not to over-shoot, I did not waste much lead.  Two I saw tumble from
the precipitous cliff.

My "guardian" was busy, too; he went leaping by me, his heavy assegai
whizzing as he ran.  Then, as a lion springs, he flung himself headlong
down, to land fairly on top of one of the sweating runners.  It was all
of twenty feet to that narrow path!  He must have knocked him
breathless and before he got his wind sent him hurtling into space.
How the boy saved himself from going over too, I did not see.  I had my
hands full dodging spears and _kerries_[3] and potting 'em as best I
could.


[3] Native fighting clubs.


A nice fast little scrap while it lasted.  I've never been in a sweeter
one or made better pistol practice.  They had enough after a dozen or
so were down, and bolted as if all the ghosts of the place were after
them.  I'd have followed up, but some had got by after Meisje and the
old girl, before we jumped 'em.  We had to let the pack go.  The chaps
above gave us a bit of trouble, but we saw no one till we made the
trail-head.

My legs never moved so fast as on that last lap; and never has suspense
so tortured me.  That we raced on the thin edge of nothing never got a
thought.  "Will we be too late?" kept pounding in my brain.  "Have they
made the pool?"  "Are their broken bodies somewhere at the foot of
these beetling cliffs?" ... It seemed a lifetime to the last jutting
turn and the hanging rock-shelf loomed overhead....  _The reim had
gone!  They had made it!_  A great weight lifted.

Two blacks were there, and when they saw us and came towards us, to my
astonishment it was with empty hands.  So panic-stricken were they I
could at first make nothing of their chatter.  They had seen the
witch-women, white and black, not far ahead--they had followed
fast--and then the trail had ended blankly--the women were gone! ...
The spirits must have taken them into the air, turning them into two
hawks that circled near!  My Man Friday, listening, was quite sure of
this too....  I found it hard to keep from laughing; such "magic" even
I could fathom.  Still, I managed a scowl and read them a lesson for
their good as I snapped them together and started them down the trail.

Good thing it was that I made them step it a few paces in the lead.
Their pals were waiting to turn our own trick on us, and the very first
shower of rocks from above bowled the pair over the edge.  Took my
cuffs with them, of course--worse luck....  Hugging the cliffside
close, we were little harmed, and legged it smartly once we were clear
of the gut.

As we neared the gallery each step called for greater caution.  Here
they could trap us neatly, themselves safe hidden.  It would be pitch
darkness to us, coming out of the sunlight.  The secret door was set
some distance in, at the very end of the ancient corridor.  Until we
were clear of this passage we were in constant danger.  And then the
door?  What time would I have to puzzle out its trick?  Nerve tension
began to tell.  I called up the black, who was lagging further and
further behind.  Faithful he had so far been, and a willing fighter,
but would he stick?  Doubtless he, too, suspected an ambush at the very
gate of safety.

"The trail hereabouts is clear--no sign of a recent camp," I said to
him.  "How many, think you, wait in the place of pictures?"

He made no audible answer, and, though he followed, it was reluctantly.
He seemed almost in a funk.  So well had he acquitted himself in the
up-trail scrimmage I was astonished.

"Heard you how many are in the cave?" I repeated sharply.

"None were within," he faltered.  "It was the home spirits.  To enter
were certain death."

"Rubbish!" I broke in on his panicky plaint, hoping to rally him.
"Thither we go to find life, not death.  The spirit guardians protect
as well as punish.  Think not thou hast earned their favour?  Art thou
not now in the Bright One's service?  Since thy blood be turned to
water, go in peace to thy own place.  I will tell her it was my order."

He stopped bewilderedly, as if half-minded to bolt.  His eyes fixed
wistfully on the distant hills.  Then, shaking himself as a dog might,
he strode quickly past me and down the trail.

"The inkosikaas gave thee into my care," came back to me.  "I go with
thee--to die!"

I've often wondered if the fellow had any premonition.  I suppose it's
all nonsense--must be, of course--but out in Africa you hear a lot
about second sight, the prescience of those about to die, and so forth.
Some creepy tales they tell! ... As usual, the unexpected happened, and
my Man Friday was snuffed out before he ever discovered that he never
could be one of those prancing warriors of that ghostly court--before
we even had a chance to get really acquainted.

He was right about the deserted gallery.  We found no ambushed foe.
The bats seemed sole tenants.  I kept a sharp look-out as we traversed
the tomb-like passage, but saw sign of no one.  He kept close at my
heels, glum and silent.  "Scared stiff," I thought, laughing inwardly.
A bit sorry I was afterwards.

We gained the end of the sepulchral hall, but I had no need to test my
wits with the puzzle of the ancient door.  It swung open noiselessly,
seemingly of itself.  The phantom light dazzled as instantly it closed
behind me, but not before my ears were stunned by the mingled sounds of
some heavy object falling with a thunderous crash, a single muffled
groan abruptly cut off, and the excited growling of a near baboon.

You can teach the monkey folk a lot more than most people imagine, but
you can't teach them to use brains they aren't possessed of.  And you
can't get out of their heads, off-hand, ideas that have been planted
and cultivated, patiently and painstakingly, for weeks and months and
even years.  Old Nano, like the rest, had a baboon's single-track mind.
He had been taught the gallery was tabu to all blacks.  He knew this
particular chap for one of the gang that had seized his white mistress;
and, seeing him following me, not unnaturally he jumped to the
conclusion that he was an enemy, to be dealt with summarily.

So he had let fall a great block of stone from the vaulted roof.  It
was tons in weight and, dropped from twelve feet above fairly on the
poor wretch, flattened him like a pancake.  It must have been
instantaneous; he never knew what happened.  Something like putting
one's foot on an insect in one's path.

But his idea was right! ... There was one Sankaeli man I take off my
hat to.  He knew that to enter the cave of the spirits meant death to
him, yet he went straight ahead, eyes front, to meet his doom
man-fashion....  Also he had fought by my side--and saved my life.

Luckily for Nano, he had scurried away.  Later on, when I had cooled
down a bit, I could see he wasn't to blame; he had done his duty as he
understood it.  But right then I was mad enough to have potted him.  He
knew I had it in for him, though why no doubt puzzled him, and made off
at a pace I wouldn't have tried to follow.  I was left alone in that
awesome corridor of amber light by which Zeete had led me to the vast
empty hall of audience with its great bronze chair.  I had no fancy
again to visit the dispiriting place; yet less was I inclined to
venture any of the unfamiliar passages.  Remembrance lingered of the
musty crypt where we had found the two prisoners and their serpent
keepers.

The sorceress and my Princess I supposed still at the pool, waiting
opportunity to regain the cavern palace.  I would have retraced my
steps, counting to meet them upon the trail, but, contriving to swing
again the massive door, I found the way was blocked.  The fallen stone
so filled the narrow passage that to go round or over it was alike
impossible.  Tug and strain as I would, using such leverage as at hand,
brought not the least result.  One might as well have sought to shift
the mountain.  I was securely penned in that dismal place, perhaps to
stay there till I starved.  Of that sweet prospect I did not think so
much as that my Little Flower and her grotesque guardian would soon be
there, to find retreat cut off.

Again and again I attacked that obstinate boulder, to no effect.
Resting for a fresh assault and trying to think of some effective plan,
it struck me that, after all, the case might not be so desperate: the
baboon had not come back; therefore he had gone somewhere.  Those hills
were honeycombed with caves and tunnels; obviously, then, there were
other exits and entrances.  Zeete would know of them?  My course was to
stand by until they came, hoping it would not be with Sankaeli's men
recovered from their panic and at their heels.  Nothing to be gained by
losing my head!  I got my pipe going and sat down to wait.

It was utterly still but for the faint tinkle of water dripping in some
sable cross-cut.  Details of the luminous walls that before had escaped
me began subconsciously to register.  There seemed all along the smooth
surface a shadowy pattern or design of interwoven circles, crosses, and
triangles, suggesting a mural inscription more ancient but somewhat
similar to those on so many Indian gates and doorways.  Possibilities
of hidden messages from the far-away past excited the imagination.
Puzzling on these, for the moment I forgot my luckless plight.  Time
passed; I know not how long.  In the excitement I had forgotten to wind
my watch.  Night and day were one in that still aisle of the unearthly
light.  I began to feel stiff and cramped--started pacing back and
forth to restore circulation.  Thus, coming to the end of my short
beat, I was about to turn, when voices reached me as through thick
walls, unrecognisable, so faint they were.

Quickly I strode on to where the luminous hallway gave on the lofty
court.  Its yawning emptiness seemed all unbroken, but as I sought to
sound its farther shadows, my eyes caught a transient movement at the
very foot of the grim throne, and then I saw that a tiny door stood
open in the base of the das itself, with two figures, diminutive at
the distance, halted there in conference.  It could be none but them!
Even as I started towards them, they moved in my direction, Meisje
hailing me joyously.  In my delight to know her safe, I quite forgot to
ask how they had come there.

A flying moment only we had together, for Zeete urged the need of
haste, and without further word led back through a narrow shaft sharply
inclining downward from beneath the throne to where, amid the luxurious
trappings of forgotten kings, she had made her home through the many
years.  Nor even then would she give us even a little time for one
another.  Our respite would be brief, she gloomily predicted.  Evening
now melted into night.  By morning Sankaeli's people once more would be
in pursuit.

"Before the new day is born thou must be hence," she insisted, "and I
be left alone, with empty heart."

That she go, too, she would not at all consider.

"This is the place of my people.  Here I have lived my life.  Here will
I leave my bones....  Also seeing me, they will think perchance that
the Princess tarries with me, and thus will thy chance be bettered,"
she reasoned logically.  "I have as well a score to settle with this
upstart king that sets his dogs upon us."

It would be a hard run for the mare, bearing double, but I could count
on my Jean, I thought with pride.

"Nay, thou must have a second horse," the reader of minds maintained.
"The trek is long and their runners swift.  Nor will they follow the
beaten track, thus saving themselves miles; whilst thou canst not press
forward as thou wouldst if thou wert alone.  She has never ridden
horse.  It will try her sorely....  Take with thee food against needs
by the way.  Masselene will make it ready.  I go to seek a horse."  She
chuckled audibly.

"What is the jest?" I asked.  "The prospect to me holds little humour."

"I thought to find a horse at the hidden stead," she answered.  "The
farmer surely can spare one to dower a neighbour maid?"

I laughed with her, while Meisje looked her bewilderment as she sped to
make her scant preparation--but to return as soon as the crone had gone.

"What jest had grand-dame that might not be shared with me?" she
questioned in woman's way.  "I have no secrets that are not my lord's."

"Where, then, hidest thou from me at the lily pool?" I asked in turn,
minded to tease.

"There is no time to tell," she answered, blushing.  "Soon of a surety
thou shalt know all, but the tale is over-long----"

"And thou shalt have mine in turn," I assured her.  "For that, too, is
no short story, and it concerns thee much."

Plainly perplexed, she gazed into my eyes.  Then her arms went about my
neck and her lips claimed mine.

"We have so much to tell to one another," she murmured.  "I would have
naught hid from thee in my whole life--am I not thy wife?"

"Thou surely wilt be, precious, so soon as we can find a parson," I
told her, whereon she must ply me anew with whys and wherefores.  All
strange and curious to her were our artificial ceremonies.

"Much foolishness it seemeth," she pouted prettily.  "But since these
are thy customs, I am content."  In a flash, her mood changing, she
added contradictorily: "But we of the Ancient Wisdom had marriage rites
as well, though they be now long disused!  It pleaseth me to go with
thee wedded!  Also it better suits the habit of thy people.  Thou wilt
not deny me this?  But a few short minutes--and it would so please
grand-dame!"

I certainly saw no reason to refuse.  One extra marriage, to bind her
the closer to me?  I nodded ready agreement and again her lips sought
mine.

"I go, then, to make ready," she exclaimed, blue eyes dancing.  "What
shall I wear?  The beads thou hast not yet seen?--and must I indeed cut
off all my hair?"[4]


[4] A marriage custom of certain of the tribes.


The question was panicky.  No such custom held among civilized peoples,
I assured her.  A woman's hair was counted her crowning glory.

"They _have_, then, some wisdom," she chirruped happily.  "I grow to
think more highly of their ways."

She fluttered away, laughingly elusive when I would have claimed a
fresh caress.

"Nay, no more now," she ruled with sweet seriousness--"not till we
plight our vows.  Thou wilt have long with me to feast thyself."

I saw no more of her till Zeete returned, successful as a horse thief.
Nano came creeping in, and, seeing me, bolted precipitately.  I ate a
little--smoked many pipes--dozed fitfully, for I was very weary.  Time
and again I called, but She did not come.  Twice I heard her laughing
merrily, mockingly.  And once her voice came to me faintly, whence I
could not tell:

"Thou must learn patience!  All husbands have need of it"--and again
her laughter rang out like silver bells.

A chuckle came from a far corner where Zeete had squatted to busy
herself with a tiny phial and an earthen bowl.  This she set down to
take from a bamboo tube a handful of small reed arrows, each in its
turn to be critically examined.  Was it quite straight?  And sound?
And rightly balanced?  Some she cast aside; others were piled by the
bowl.  Curiosity drew me to her.  She grinned up over a shrunken
shoulder.

"Masselene shoots well," said she.  "These are for her to take."

"Not much use against bullets," I laughed, picking up one of the toy
missiles.  "Doth she make war, then, on the small birds alone?"

"Thy lead were the less deadly when I have done with them," she
answered grimly, dipping an arrow's tip and laying it carefully aside.
It dried at once--a stain of rusty brown no bigger than a pin-point.

"What is the stuff?" I asked.  The Bushmen, I knew, were accounted
adept poisoners.

"This witch's brew," said she, "the blacks know it as the 'Seed of
Death.'  Sometimes the venom of snakes serves well.  Others will use
that of the spinner of webs; it is more sure but harder to come at.
But best is this of mine, which never fails and works with thought's
speed.  For each small drop N'gwa gives his life, but in that drop is
death for ten strong men....  Beware the strength of the weak."[5]


[5] One of the favourite Bushman poisons was the venom of a spider of
the genus Mygale; another, for which no antidote was known,
exceptionally deadly, was made from the entrails of the caterpillar
N'gwa.


N'gwa, the caterpillar, a master poison-carrier!  That lowly crawling
thing that every day is trodden underfoot without a thought!  It seemed
incredible, but later I proved it truth.

Meisje dancing in ended my education in the poisoner's art.  She blew
me an airy kiss and forthwith threw her arms about the withered dame,
stooping to whisper confidences the pith of which I guessed.  Zeete
appeared at first bewildered; then, grinning broadly, she scrambled to
her feet, her bowl and sheaf of deadly arrows carefully cherished.  My
Princess pirouetting daintily ahead, they vanished behind the peacock
portires, whence came a steady flow of excited whispering and then
long silence.  I had begun to wonder what had become of them when the
witch materialized from the cell-like shrine wherein that hideous idol
sat enthroned.

"Our Princess saith thou art minded to wed after the manner of our
people?" she stated questioningly, her marked complacency betokening
her delight.  "It pleaseth me that thou wouldst have it so, nor need
precious time be lost.  Our rites were few and simple, even for the
royal house, yet lacking not force and meaning, nor lightly to be
forgotten....  Time was when I myself thought much upon them--when
Spring's wine flowed warm in my veins and one there was..."

A trembling skeleton hand was lifted to brush unshed tears from the
faded eyes; the bloodless lips quivered tremulously.  Knowing not what
to say, I patted clumsily a parchment-like shoulder that shortly ceased
to tremble.

"So long, long ago, yet it seemeth but yesterday, for all the lonely
years," came in a choking whisper....  She bravely pushed her memories
aside.

"Marriage!" she mused--"the fusing of two creative forces--merging of
souls and bodies, thoughts, interests, joys, sorrows, ambitions!  How
wonderful it is, this basic institution of the all-wise gods!  Not for
a day, a year, but all of life.  Once bound, the golden fetters may not
be broken or cast off.  Search, then, thy heart and mind, lest regret
be born too late."

Her earnest gravity checked light rejoinder.  After all, marriage is
still a serious and lasting business among some savage peoples.  I did
a quick bit of serious thinking and felt the better.

"My mind is fixed," I told her soberly.  "The maid holds all my heart
and I would wed, to care for and cherish her."

A moment her sunken eyes searched mine, seeming to sound my soul, and
then a skinny hand was outthrust, English fashion, to clasp mine.

"Truth is in thy heart," she said simply.  "It pleaseth me well.  To
none but thee would I trust my jewel, but her happiness and her life
already are in thy hands.  Come, then.  Thy bride waits."

"Thine will be such a marriage as never have these musty courts looked
down on," she murmured, as we passed from the palace chamber.  "An
alien lord, a Princess by adoption and by deceit--no dancers, no
musicians, no wedding feast, no offerings, no priest--a virgin witch,
the agent of the high gods!  Thou art not like to forget!"

We were now in the shadow of the misshapen idol, towards which I
glanced with casual contempt.  I wondered that one with such proved
sense still could give credence to pagan frauds.

"'Tis what is symbolized, not the insensate wood, or stone, or gold, or
form, or fittings," she answered unvoiced thought.  "Hast in thy
temples naught so meant? ... The Serpent with us of ancient days
typifies Wisdom----"

She stopped abruptly, seeing I gave scant heed.  I looked for Meisje,
but she was not there.

"It is our heathen custom," Zeete smiled, "that the man await the
woman.  Short will thy waiting be.  I hear her now."

Ethereal music, a mere melodic whisper, filled the gloomy court.  With
hurried injunction that I await her further word, Zeete was gone again,
to reappear almost instantly, decked in the fantastic trappings of her
occult trade and take her priestess's place before the brooding effigy.
She signed to me to stand facing her and at her right hand; and, as I
moved to do so, the portires parted and my love appeared, dancing, not
walking--dancing as might a fairy, her little feet twinkling all
soundlessly, her arms, her fingers, her swaying slender form in
rhythmic unison to make perfect just such a poem of movement as once,
and only once, had been unfolded before my eyes--that mad night of
phantom pageantry in the reincarnated amphitheatre.

I gazed entranced, enchanted, the while she made with unstudied fluid
grace a single circuit of the tiny room and sank, as might a snowflake,
at the witch's feet, her fair head bowed to her maiden breast.  Her
unbound tresses made for her a crown of shimmering gold, and on her
neck and shoulders was that which made me gasp in stark amaze--a
necklace of dull whitish pebbles tied to a strip of sinew.  Fully a
hundred stones; and, though I am all unlearned in lapidary's lore, I
knew them for uncut diamonds worth a monarch's ransom.

Slowly she rose, to stand demurely before her foster-mother at my side.
Her hand crept shyly into mine.  Zeete's leathery palm fell on both.
Her piping voice was lifted in ceremonial chant.

"... Giving each, himself and herself, completely to the other, in soul
and body as in wealth or want, in sickness or in health, in Sun or
shadow, in singleness of thought and act and mind till they shall
answer the call of the Lords of Rest," I heard as in a dream; "let,
then, the god of Wisdom bind and guide them!"

I started at a cold and clammy touch upon my wrist; and, glancing down,
felt the prickling hair rise on my scalp in horror; the adder that had
coiled somnolent about the pigmy's arm had, as she spoke, slipped down,
and now twined itself round our two hands, the hard, unwinking eyes
glittering, blackly malevolent, in the swaying head.

Move I dare not.  Fear held me paralysed, yet not for my own safety but
for Her.  Stealthily, slowly, my left hand moved upwards.  I thought to
snatch away the waving terror, though it meant speedy death....  My
bride's voice checked me, steady and soft and sweet:

"Nay, it will harm not, my husband and my lord.  'Tis but the test of
Truth, menacing none whose hearts' be free of guile.  See, even now its
little part is done"--and as she spoke the reptile again entwined
itself on Zeete's offered arm.

"Salute thy happy wife!"




CHAPTER XI

AN UNSEEN SWORD FALLS

Such was our marriage.  Of that which followed, memory is a blur.  Late
in the afternoon we stole forth cautiously to reconnoitre.  From the
high cliff above, we looked down on the stead, to see Gentil's people
moving about in panicky disorder, with no sign of the master.
Sankaeli's men stalked truculently everywhere, the timorous field folk
and herders shrinking from them in obvious fear.  And as we watched,
horses and flocks were gathered and driven forth.

Look where we might, black spearmen seemed everywhere--strung out along
the track--watching upon the heights--mustered in strengthened force
below the gallery.  And all were decked for war, confirming, to my
dismay, what we had heard of the countryside in arms.  No doubt
remained, the situation was serious indeed.  To make the Post would now
be difficult, nor was I over sure of the Post itself.  Likely we should
have to abandon it for a time; and past all question it was no place
for Her with the war drums booming.

My better plan, I judged, would be to strike forthwith for Pandaasburg,
or, rather, its nearest outpost, fifty odd miles away across the river.
The natives would count on my heading south-east for Olifantsfontein,
and would distribute themselves to cut us off.  Olifantsfontein track,
as I knew it, was hard and tortuous, with two bad rivers to swim,
lacking safe drifts.[1]  I might have chanced it myself, but dared not
with a life to guard more precious than my own.


[1] Ford.


We slipped away, so soon as night had settled, by the secret trail.
There Zeete had hidden the horses so cleverly I would have passed them
by.  The beast she had commandeered in our need was steady and
tractable, with plenty of bone and muscle for a long, hard grind, and
an easy gait--a trippler country-bred.  She had brought it saddled and
bridled, but we took off and cached the saddle.  Meisje foresaw it
would be too hard for her.  Also she doubted her skill and strength for
management of the beast, so that I thought it best to unbuckle one end
of the rein and lead for a while at least.  We mounted by the great
rock where the little spruit made its music in the darkness, and there
we took leave of Zeete, a wraith-like shadow in the enveloping gloom.
She was to play her part in striving to lull suspicion that the maid
had flown.

To strike the Pandaasburg track we had perforce to skirt Sankaeli's
kraal.  Here was active danger.  Happily the track was a bit sunken and
the mealies alongside grown high.  The horses behaved well, too, as,
having muffled them, I led past in terror of chance discovery.  Once a
dog barked challenge, and I thought luck had deserted us.  We halted,
and Meisje sprang lightly down and for an instant clung to me, then
busied herself watching and listening, her sheaf of arrows ready, the
while I scouted and thereafter breathed more freely.  There was a big
_twala_[2] drink on and it held attention.  We safely passed and soon
were cantering forward, doing a steady eight miles, or even better.  My
spirits rose with dawn's coming.  At least we had won the start.


[2] Native beer.


Morning had an hour come before I thought it safe to halt.  We had
rounded the base of Sankaeli's mountain and were skirting the low
plateau from which it springs.  Thunder was in the air, with signs of
storm; occasional angry rumblings echoed from the high hills, answering
the unbroken roll of the calling drums.  The track led on through a
minor kloof fairly thick with _wacht-en-beetje_ that gave welcome
cover, while the shrunken watercourse still held sufficient for our
needs.  Here I off-saddled, knee-haltered our beasts, and left them to
rest and graze such time as we dared spare.

Meisje was a bit stiff, but still smiling.  Never was there another
such woman!  Resourceful, calm, quick-witted, knowledgful, ready to
face all dangers clear-eyed and unafraid!  She had come through like a
brick, never once complaining, happy as a lark.  Not that she didn't
sense as well as I the tight squeeze we were in; but, as she said, we
were in it together, and moping or worrying wouldn't better matters.
While I looked after the horses she busied herself domestically, as if
she were in her own kitchen in a land of peace, humming softly as she
flitted forth and back between the spruit and a flat-topped rock she
had elected table.  And soon she called me to breakfast--our wedding
breakfast!

Not much of a feast, yet to me it was nectar and ambrosia.  I fancied
her sitting opposite me at a real table, white cloth and everything,
pouring the coffee and sweetening it with her smiles.  _Biltong_ there
was, a few hard biscuits, some young green mealies and prickly pear.
She had made of the pear a very tasty dish, taking branches and rubbing
the prickles off in the running water.  I'd never have thought of that.
It's a native trick.  And in place of coffee we had, mixed with clear
water, a marvellously heartening cordial of the witch's brewing,
stimulating and delicious.

Womanlike, she must afterwards tidy up the place as Nature had it.
There were no dishes to be washed and put away, which seemed unfair.
Every real woman is born a housewife.  We were on the road again before
the sun was high, and I was just beginning to feel a bit easier, for
thus far we had seen no one, when far to the left and behind flashed a
danger signal.  It came and went, a glint of bluish light showing
fitfully against the mountain's shadow.  Thus do assegais flash when
the sun strikes on them.

That was what it was--moving spearmen--and we pushed forward at the
best pace her mount could make for upwards of an hour.  It must have
been cruelly hard for her, but she gave no sign.  Then we stopped on a
little bush-screened rise and had a careful look round.  The blacks
were in plain sight, twenty, if not more, still a long way back of us,
but unpleasantly closer than when we had spotted them.  Great runners
they are--can go all day long, even wearing down a good horse if they
set themselves to it.  They must have picked up our spoor in the early
morning and come right along after us.

We kept going.  There was nothing else to do.  The sun poured hotly
down, flooding the veldt with scorching waves.  Our borrowed horse had
been grass-fed and showed growing distress; even Jean was in a lather.
The grind had been hard and steady, for we had put a good sixty miles
behind us.  God, how she must have suffered, and yet she could smile!

Collapse came suddenly.  The lead-rein jerked and her beast stumbled to
its knees.  Turning, I saw her swaying silently, and, to save herself,
fall limply forward, clutching about his neck.  I was at once beside
her, lifting her down.  Wanly she shook her head.

"It may not be, my husband," she faltered.  "I thought myself so
strong, yet I am weak.  Truly I am spent and can go no farther.  Leave
me, then, here, nor tarry....  Yea, but thou must go on...."

I would not harken, but bore her, bravely protesting, to where a clump
of thorn offered a little shade.  Much did I reproach myself that,
knowing little of women, I had so over-tried her strength.

"Nay, it was indeed my fault only," she insisted.  "Nor will I let thee
stay.  As thou loveth me, press on quickly; it is thy duty.  What we
have learned thy chiefs must know forthwith.  Else many die perchance
who might be saved.  I would not have my lord forget his honour."

Was ever man so tried?  There was, I knew, though I denied it fiercely,
much in her argument, yet could I not bear to think.  I would not leave
here there--I could not!  And when she pleaded my duty against my will,
pictured the horrors of honest farmer folk butchered who might be
saved, boasted how she would contrive again to break free of the old
king's clutches if worst befell, I thought I should indeed go mad.

And all the while Sankaeli's pack were closing the gap of miles.

She saw at length my mind would not be changed, and instantly sought
then to justify my course.

"'Tis not that thou loveth me and I am thy wife," she said, "but that I
am helpless woman in thy care!"

That I could save her when they should overhaul us was but a forlorn
hope.  That death should not part us rather was in my mind.  But I
would fight it out!

Time offered for me at least to pick my ground.  Near was the very
place for a good last stand, on a gentle rise giving an ideal line of
fire.  Here, with any sort of luck, I could hold them off till night,
when I must be surrounded and the end come quickly.  This I made
cruelly clear.  She took it like a soldier.

"Indeed, naught shall part us, lord," she said, and still she smiled.
"Shouldst thou fall, I will not be taken.  Quickly I will come to thee.
The understanding gods will surely forgive."

Nothing would do but she should help me while I threw up a little
schans.  Pitifully weak it was, but the best we could manage.  We both
were the better for work's distraction.  Then, pacing off distances, I
set out small whitish stones to mark my ranges, and fitted a useful
rest for my service rifle.  All was done I could think to do.  We sat
down to await what might be.  Somehow I felt grimly content.  I should
at least die fighting, and I was a good shot and knew I could get half
a dozen of them with any sort of luck, which was a crumb of comfort.

Nothing so horribly tries tense nerves as doing nothing--just waiting.
Nothing is harder to bear when one is all keyed up.  Even if we had but
a few more short hours for each other and life, the minutes dragged.
The Sankaelis didn't come.  At the speed they'd been making, half an
hour from where we had last caught sight of them should have brought
them, swarming like hornets, round us.  The half-hour passed.  No sound
of humankind merged with the myriad little voices of the veldt.  A
venturesome meerkat[3] slipped from beneath a rock and stared
questioningly, one forefoot lifted, poised for instant retreat.  An
eagle circled lazily in the brassy sky on his everlasting watch.  A
pair of timid oribi[4] drifted across the field of sight.


[3] A small animal of the mongoose sort.

[4] A small antelope.


I could stand inaction no longer.  A minor rise of land cut off for a
mile or two the track over which we had stormed.  I risked leaving my
frail Gibraltar and (Meisje with me) climbed a big rock that offered
better vantage.  We could scarcely believe our eyes: _the Amaxosas were
trekking homeward--pursuit given over!_

I scarcely knew which was stronger, our perplexity or relief.  It's
quite a let-down to get all set for the heroic and nothing come off.
We couldn't understand.  Months after, the riddle was read for me:
Bambata's men had talked pretty straight to the old king.  They didn't
want any man-power wasted in chasing after a mere woman just at that
time; and I fancy old Zeete and her protge may have had rather more
prestige down in Zululand than Sankaeli imagined.  At any rate, he had
sent out fast runners to call off his dogs.

We rested almost with easy minds through the balance of the blissful
afternoon, and got going again, at the walk, in the early evening,
keeping a sharp lookout but seeing no one.  All that night we pushed
on, the track in places wide enough for me to ride alongside and talk
with my tired wife.  She needed no cheering up.  We both were very
happy and confident.  Time raced as we talked--made scores of different
plans for what we dreamed was to be the future.  The late rising moon
found us within the loom of the mountains, and dawn was in the sky when
we reached the river and I knew we must be nearing the first of the
Pandaasburg posts.

The trail had narrowed again and I was leading, jogging along
contentedly, when it happened: something stirred in the long grass,
perhaps a lion, I thought.  The startled horses shied different ways.
I had tied the lead-rein to my arm and was jerked from the saddle, my
foot catching in the stirrup.  Jean may have dragged me, though it's
hard for me to think it.  I don't know.  My head got it, and got it
badly, and I lost consciousness....

When I came to it was full day.  I was alone.  My head was splitting
and every bone in my body seemed to be broken, although it was only my
ankle.  My rifle was gone.  The stirrup-leather had pulled out of the
saddle--that must have taken some strain.  The horses had disappeared.
_MEISJE WAS GONE!_




CHAPTER XII

DOWN TO THE DEPTHS

Once more the sun peeped over the mountain wall at the awakened
veldtland.  The thin mists of early morning billowed and rolled and
melted into the crystal air.  Bushbuck and reitbuck[1] performed their
morning pilgrimage, quenched their thirst at the river, stood
statue-still on its bank to look the country over and find it
good--then, one by one, turned to their runs, seeking the cool of shady
hollows and the day's repose: always those four stiff-legged walking
steps and then, lightly and fleetly, away in effortless bounds.  In the
vlei[2] a flock of great blue cranes challenged proprietorship with the
solemn secretary birds, importantly busy in their quest of snakes to
justify the faith of a favouring government.[3]  Nearer, in the bushed
flat, buck pheasants crowed shrilly; while scream of guinea-fowl and
whir of partridge swelled the matutinal anthem.  It was a typical
springtime morning--yet all the world had changed.


[1] A small red deer.

[2] Marshland.

[3] The secretary bird as a snake-eater is protected.


I found myself by the track when consciousness returned with torment of
thought.  To move was agony, my left leg useless.  My clothing was torn
and caked with blood and dirt.  I dragged myself to a near rise in the
deserted track, whence I looked long and anxiously for sign of Meisje,
calling to her and Jean till my strength was spent.  Not even echo
answered, and the pain grew apace, so that I felt myself faint.

It was then, searching the river's course with aching eyes, I saw in
the morn's cool light on the further bank a fluttering flag, and knew
it to mark a Post of our police!  Did ever so cruel irony mock a
despairing man?  Here we had been in sight of friends and safety when
adverse Fate stretched forth its hand to snatch my treasure from me and
strike me down!

To gain the Post and help was now my goal.  To take stock of my damage
was first demanded.  The ankle was the worst, I quickly found; beyond
doubt it was broken, and very badly--a compound fracture, the
splintered bone protruding from the torn and fevered flesh.  Whisper of
running water reached me from not far distant, and toward it I dragged
myself inch by inch until, after what seemed hours' travail, I gained
the trickling spruit, in whose chill waters I held my burning foot
until the agony was somewhat eased and the swelling much reduced.

Long I drank of the grateful water, too, and then began toilsome effort
to reach the river.  I could not stand.  Fever ran hot within me.  My
mind was in confusion and all things swam and danced before my eyes.
Yet I made laggard progress, with frequent stops to catch my failing
breath.  Nettles buffeted my face.  The long grass cut my hands; and
more than once I halted in expectancy of death, as snakes drew
threatening from my course.

One of these, a mamba of great length--it must have measured full seven
feet from evil head to tip of tail--stood ground and fixed me with its
baleful glare, the while the wicked head swayed menacingly.  It had
been stretched, full fed, beside its wanton kill, a hapless dassie, the
hair of which came out in handfuls when I touched it, by which I knew
it poisoned through and through.[4]  The breeding season had passed,
else I had surely been as that luckless rabbit.[5]


[4] When an animal dies of snakebite its hair can be very easily
plucked out.

[5] The mamba is said to attack man unprovokedly only during the
breeding season.


Had it not been downward going, I never should have made it, but by
luck's chance I gained the river--a swiftly-flowing torrent that must
after the rains have swept the valley as a wall of water.  Too swift
for crocodiles, lingering reason told me, and such a stream as to be
crossed by none in time of flood.

My watch showed five o'clock when, torn and spent, at last I gained the
water and once more drank deep.  Again and again I shouted, but got no
answer.  That dear familiar flag fluttered maddeningly over silent huts
that seemed untenanted, and not a wisp of smoke rose in the wind-washed
air.  An hour passed, and yet another.  My throat was parched and sore
with futile calling....  The watch said 7.30 before any movement showed
on the further shore.  A man stepped from the hut and stood idly gazing
toward the distant hills.  Desperately I called.  He turned and
sauntered leisurely towards the mess and coffee.  That I had not been
heard was all too plain.

My strength was gone: I knew death very near.  Yet I _must_ live to set
them upon her spoor.  I rallied to my cause the last reserves of mind
and will.  Matches I had, and the high grass was dry and plentiful.
With shaking, swollen hands I fired it.  Smoke eddied round me in a
choking cloud.  I strained my eyes to watch, but none had seen....

An age in truth it seemed, in which hope fled, when they came down to
the stream to water the horses.  I yelled as best I could, and one
halted and stood looking towards me, listening.  Then with his beast he
swam the river, and I knew help came at last....

He found me unconscious, and, as he thought, dead.  I know nothing of
how they took me across, or of what befell later, save "from
information received."  I had a rather bad go with the fever, I
judge--_Malaria ferox_--in which I raved my head off.  They must have
put two and two together and guessed that some girl was lost.  On that
long chance they made search for her, following back my spoor to where
I'd been thrown; and there all about were footprints, not mine at all!
Gentil's horse they found miles away, on the home track, with a
sprained fetlock joint.  Jean had made her way back to the Post in
sorry shape.

They were stumped, and owned it--couldn't do a thing more till my wits
came back to me, and that wasn't for weeks.  When I did manage to tell
my story, their hands were so full with duty they could do little more.
"Hope for the best" was all they could say to me--perhaps she had
managed to get back to her home in the caves and was hiding up.  She at
least knew the country and the native ways.  "Not as though she was
_white_!"  That made me fume.  They thought sickness had turned my head!

As soon as I was strong enough I rode back to the old Post.  They had
got word to our chaps where I was and the shape I was in, and the O.C.
was uncommonly decent: passed the word for me to take it easy, sent
along some magazines, and said he'd look me up as soon as he could get
round to it.  But all that didn't help my trouble; he wouldn't give me
the leave I wanted, with things as they were in the district and
Bambata on the rampage.  Can't say I could fairly blame him; he'd
gassed with the Pandaasburg detail and got their version--and I hadn't
said a word to my own outfit as to any white girl, which made my tale
sound fishy.  So they wagged their silly heads and whispered, "Poor
fellow!  Fever!" till I thought I'd go mad.

Many a day I spent prowling about her hills and our
trysting-pool--haunting the deserted stead.  Gentil had vanished about
the same time the trouble with the blacks blew up, and his people
scattered.  I thought they would have gone back to their Chief, but
Sankaeli swore he'd seen nothing of them or the farmer either.  There
were horses in his kraal at the time that I knew precious well were
Gentil's; but I couldn't prove it.  And as for a White Witch living
with the spirit people--he had never seen one.  "Just talk," the
stories some of his people had told of her.  "They must have seen one
of the ghost people."  Zeete had gone as well; I could get no word of
her.  And the gallery of the paintings was, when I visited it, given
over to the bats and birds.  The ancient door at its end seemed sealed
by time.  I could not make it open.

I had no excuses for further loafing and work would be some occupation
for my troubled mind, so back to duty I went--wanted to stick around
there whatever happened.  We were short-handed as usual, and in saddle
most of the time, for the trouble wasn't over and our blacks were out
to help the Zulus all they could and not get their own fingers burnt.
Then one day we got the good news that the Zulu had been properly
smashed and Bambata's head stuck on a pole at the gates of his
principal village.  Things quieted down then even sooner than we
thought....

I had just got in from one of my fruitless circling rides over the
hills and was sitting on the low stoep in the dying afternoon, staring
with aching eyes at nothing.  My rifle lay across my knees, its worn
and shiny bands strangely soft to the touch.  Our pet baboon scrabbled
its hands in the hard dust in that rasping, half-human way they have.
I had semi-consciously been sighting at the beast as I'd often done
before, but with little interest any longer in its instant dodge behind
the tree.  Its half-intelligence seemed an affront.  I hated all things.

Some of our native police boys came through the thorn trees with a
prisoner, and my gorge rose as I made out the beast for a type I'd been
over-familiar with--a mine coolie, and by his looks one of the worst.
The foul face with the rheumy slits of eyes and the dirty yellow-black
skin, the festering mouth, the mangy tufted scrub that covered his
once-shaven head--and, well I knew before I got a whiff of it, the
abominable smell of him!

I looked away in disgust while the kaffir sergeant droned out his
"rap-port."

He had gone on patrol as ordered.  He had visited this kraal and that
kaffir stad.[6]  He had dug out this prisoner from the brush near
Sankaeli's old kraal----


[6] Small holding.


At that I looked sharply round, catching my breath.  A cold hand seemed
at my throat.  My ears hummed.  I turned my gaze on the Chinese, taking
in each detail--his filthy face, the yellow rheum at the corners of his
slant eyes, a scratch on his flat nose, his ragged blue blouse, his
sturdy, misshapen legs.  He had made himself sandals of a sort--native
foot bandages, rather.  A bit of duck was wound about his right foot.
I glanced at the other.  It was tied up in the hide of a Marbled Cat!

I didn't think at all.  My rifle cracked and he fell forward on his
face, dead as a herring.  They said the bullet drilled clean through
his heart.

      *      *      *      *      *

Well, they made me a prisoner and took away my gun.  Poor old Pete was
detailed to take me in to headquarters, a job he didn't much relish.
We started next day, after saying good-bye to the boys everyone trying
to look as if nothing had happened.  Old John started to give me some
message for his canteen sergeant, but bit it off and took to cursing a
police-boy for some purely imaginary delinquency.  It was deuced
uncomfortable.  I was glad when we got under way.

It was like going off on patrol together, and yet in little things it
wasn't--my empty rifle-bucket flapping against my mare's side when she
cantered--the feeling that I was looking on each new prospect for the
last time--poor Pete's uncommon generosity with "the makin's."  We kept
starting talks that trailed off into nothing--the locust swarm three
miles thick on the Crocodile Valley--the wild dogs that were killing
off the game at Olifantsburg--how long the Government would allow our
fellows to be taken hunting for Kruger's gold in the bad season that
killed off so many--whether we'd all be kicked out when the new Boer
Government got in swing....  I tried to keep up my end, but my head
felt numb.

We crossed the Steelpoort at the familiar drift, taking the horses
fifty yards upstream to allow for the racing current.  The old native
living there took our clothing across on his head, smacking the water
to scare off the crocs.; and we followed, towing our beasts.  A
dangerous river, the Steelpoort!  Once swept past the
landing-place--good-night!

It was while we were dressing again the thought struck me, why hadn't I
gone down?  One strong pull at the lead-rein would have done the trick!
It would have checked the mare for the instant and we should have been
swept away together past the tangled roots of the trees, under the
overhanging branches, into that tunnel of shade and endless quiet!

What had I to live for?  The thought grew on me as we remounted and set
out.  Why hadn't I, when I had the chance?  But perhaps there'd be
another?  I must think--think!  For the first time that day my brain
cleared.  I had something to plan--something to do.  How could I do it?
I was unarmed, of course; even the tiny pistol some of us carried in
native country for reasons of our own had been deftly abstracted from
my clothes the night before.

My eyes searched the countryside--Pete and his horse.  His rifle?
Could I snatch it?  No, he had a good grip and the sling was on his
arm.  Besides, unless you rig a loop of string to the trigger and work
it with your toe, you can't do much damage to yourself with the old
long rifle....  Should I make a break for it?  And would Pete shoot if
I did?  Yes, I decided, he probably would--but he'd miss, or merely
wound me.  I must have something more certain.

If I'd seen a mamba by the trackside I'd have thrown myself off and on
top of it.  I had seen one last not far from there.  I remembered how I
had tantalized it with a whip, and when it went for me I'd kept Jean
cantering in front of it to see how fast it really could move--a boy's
trick.  Suppose she'd put her foot in a hole?  As it was, it nearly got
me, for we had suddenly found ourselves on a promontory, the ground
falling away sharply in a great cliff where the Steelpoort makes a huge
curve in toward the road again--an awful place.  I had to pretty near
jump that snake to get back!

A great cliff, yes!  Suppose ...  I had it!  That cliff!  One last hard
gallop, the wind singing in our ears, and then----  Wouldn't old Pete
be surprised!  That was all I thought right then.  I grew almost
cheerful.  How pleased the old lad was!  He laughed and joked, starting
in to tell me his worn-out tale about somebody who had all but lost his
trousers getting through a wire fence.  I kept laughing, for I could
see the place we were nearing was the very spot where I'd teased my
mamba.  Away to the right the ground rose in a gentle swell, and I knew
what lay beyond the crest, it might be a mile away!

I stiffened ever so slightly in the saddle and rubbed my calf on the
mare's barrel.  Instantly she broke into her long, even walk--then
shortened her stride, gave her head a toss, mouthed her bit.  The
little Basuto ears began to twitch--flashed back and forth.  Not yet,
old girl, not yet! ... In a moment or two!

We came to the place.  I kept talking all the time.  Then I leaned
forward and closed my legs....  You had to know Jean to ride her.  She
leaped straight in air--one small bound and then a huge one, like an
antelope.  I used to like it, but then I knew her ways.  She did it to
get her pace up.  And she certainly could get off the mark in a hurry!

As I swung off the track I heard Pete's startled shout and the thud of
his leggings on his saddle-flaps.  Poor old Pete!  As if his beast
could catch my Jean!  Couldn't she move!  The veldt streaked by in a
green and yellow line.  I leaned forward and yelled exultantly, but I
couldn't even hear myself.  My voice was caught and swept back as we
flew on.  Then the near skyline flashed down past the opposite
mountains and I went down with a bump and a wrench that ought to have
broken Jean's back but didn't--and found myself still sitting her as
she clawed desperately back to safety.  I could have thrown myself over
then, but my muscles seemed to do mechanically what my mind didn't want
them to.  Next minute I was watching Pete's roan come up the rise, old
Pete with his elbows stuck out and his hat gone to glory--Jean shaking
under me, her lean head moving from side to side as she swung it to
take stock of the fool on her back, first one eye, then the other.

And then I felt mightily ashamed, for it came over me, seeing Pete's
anxious face, how I'd tried to let him down.  Had I gone over, his
chances of promotion were scotched for good, and well I knew it.
Scarth was a just man, and kindly; he might even have sympathised with
him in his heart, but then--Pete would have been finished!

He had a perfect right to handcuff me, or change horses, but he didn't.
We pushed on.

When we got to the dorp[7] I was handed over to the town police.  The
sight of the blue uniforms with the numbers on the collars made me feel
indeed a criminal.  I was put in a tent and guarded night and day, some
of my own friends having to do this duty.  I was examined by doctors.
I was questioned and questioned again.  Then I was tried.  I had a
clever lawyer.  Evidence was given that I had had a bad fall, followed
by fever, since which I had been acting queerly.  They brought in a
manslaughter verdict, with a recommendation to mercy.  You know the
form.  I wasn't paying much attention to what went on.  I was looking
out of the window at the town, thinking it was likely to be good-bye to
the busy world.


[7] Town.


A pretty little place it was, with trees and a stream of water along
each side of every street, the market square in the middle and shops
and stores clustered round it--a couple of churches, the club, the
Masonic Hall, nice girls, tennis courts, flowers, H.Q. offices in what
once had been a private mansion set like a jewel in a garden.  They're
pretty much all the same.

I was sent to jail at Pretoria by the coach, a regular Deadwood Dick
affair with leather springs and a twelve-mule team, changed every nine
miles.  It was frightfully dusty.  One nigger drove while another plied
the long whip.  There must have been gold aboard, for we had an escort
of six troopers--two with us, two in front, and two behind.  Oh, I
travelled in style!

There isn't much more to tell.  They used me white--didn't treat me,
for some reason, as criminals are and should be treated.  I could feel
their friendliness.  But no more Africa for me when they gave me a
cheap suit of civvies and told me I could go--too many bitter memories.

I had a bit of money put by, and I booked a passage as far as it would
take me.  That happened to be Rio--rough and roystering Rio it was
then.  But memories followed; didn't even wait for the next ship.  I
tried to drown them and they wouldn't drown.  Then I tried to slip them
again: got a stoker's billet, sweated the rotten whisky out of me and
found myself in Melbourne--headed for the Marble Bar, naturally.  Tried
station riding and lost my job; didn't want it, anyway, and the
liquor'd lost its bite.  Drifted up to Darwin--Thursday
Island--Soeribaia--Hongkong--Honolulu.  It was there I found merciful
forgetfulness for a while in the good "black smoke."  Then
Seattle--blatant, booming, bombastic, barbarian Seattle!  I left there
as soon as I could raise the price, and kept going--on and on, like the
Wandering Jew.

Must be touching bottom now--and the string's about played out.  The
jail doctor that saw me last gave me his word for that.  I'm through
and smashed and finished, and no one to care a tinker's curse....  But
I'd like this (the catskin was laid on the orderly table) to be
somewhere else than in the garbage can....  It--it means something to
me still!




POSTSCRIPT I

SCIENCE HOLDS THE SCALES

The Professor carefully relighted his neglected pipe.  The grate fire
had burned low.  Night had come unmarked.  There was a shuffling of
chairs.  They drew a concerted deep breath.  The tension was broken.

"But that's not the end?" Brown protested.  "Can't be?  Come, give us
the rest of it!"

"I'm afraid there isn't much more to tell," the Professor hesitated.
"As I've told you, I felt deeply for the chap.  Something about him
drew me to him uncommonly.  He may have had that white magnet-stone
about him?  When he'd finished I felt almost indecent, sitting there
gawping at him.  And there wasn't a thing I could say.  The silence
lengthened awkwardly.

"I picked up the scrap of pelt and studied it perfunctorily, more to
give him a chance to pull himself together than from any immediate
interest in the thing itself.  But you know how it is with us
scientific sharks?  I soon was scrutinising it sharply on its own
account and on account of what he'd told me, and presently looked up to
see him still glooming there with unseeing eyes.

"'Look here,' I said, 'what makes you so almighty certain this was the
same thing she wore?'

"He jumped as if I'd shot him.

"'Why--why, it must have been,' he stammered.  'There couldn't have
been any other....  It isn't found in Africa--only in the Himalayas--in
Assam----'

"'But that doesn't say it couldn't be found as well on the Chinese side
of the mid-Asian highlands,' I objected.  'Its habitat likely would
extend into the Thibetan range.  Then why take it for granted it isn't
found also in far-western China?'

"He studied a bit on that.  The dull eyes had grown feverishly bright.

"'That might be so,' he grudgingly conceded.  'But--but--what are you
staring at so?  For God's sake what's in your mind?'

"I had fished out my magnifying glass and was giving the skin a
thorough up-and-down.  And as I examined it, suspicion grew.  I was on
my own ground, nosing like a hound on a hot scent.  He had almost to
shout his question again in my ear.

"'And if _Felis Marmorata_ is found in the western China hinterland, is
it not possible,' I asked, 'that this might rightly have belonged to
the Chinaman?  You say the cat was shot on one of the Indian rivers?
_Where's the bullet mark?_'

"He reached out, but his hand shook so he could scarcely pick it up;
and, with it in his hand, he could hardly focus the glass.

"When an animal is killed by rifle-shot, the bullet, you must know,
makes a small round wound, and usually the skin afterwards is neatly
patched with a little circular piece of the same fur, if it can be got,
fitted into the hole and deftly stitched.  I couldn't find a sign of
such a wound, nor of any such mending.

"But I did find--and I pointed it out to him--a longitudinal slit just
such as might have been made by a cutting instrument of some sort--a
spear or an arrow.  And it had been sewn up; the minute stitches were
made with Chinese silk.  The thing might once have formed one of those
tiny bags such as Orientals use for keeping nicknacks in in their kits.

"He stared at that stitching, biting his dry lips.  Then he crumpled
up, shivering, in his chair.

"'My God!' the words seemed torn from him.  'You're right, man--you're
right! ... And I killed him!  I'm not only a murderer--I'm a blind,
blundering fool!'"

The Professor relapsed into silence, puffing vigorously.  They waited
for him to go on.

"And...?" Bradley prodded him.

"And that's all," he said.  "We threshed it out then and there--came to
the conclusion on that strange scrap of circumstantial evidence, the
Exhibit 'A' that was all the case, that it couldn't have been her
moocha at all!"

"And the man?" Brown spoke for all.  "What became of him?"

"I never saw him again.  He drifted that night."




POSTSCRIPT II

AS ONE SCIENTIST TO ANOTHER

(_Extract from Letter of Cyrus Merriman, M.A., F.R.G.S., M.C.I., etc.,
etc., to Professor Mark Fidlerton._)


"... You will, I feel confident, be interested to know that upon
completion of my research work in the Sankuru valley, the essential
results of which are fairly embodied in my advance report to appear in
the forthcoming issue of the Association journal, opportunity presented
for me to pay a visit I long had promised myself to the Sankaeli hill
country and its interesting system of tunnels, caves, and galleries,
many of which present indisputable evidence of human occupancy
antedating all authentic records and of a vanished civilization of
which science has no knowledge.  This field, I saw enough to convince
me, will well repay carefully organized attention, particularly with a
view to the possible interpretation of messages from the long dead past
contained in sundry petroglyphic records of a prehistoric race that
must at some early period of earth's history have here resided for a
considerable time.

"These demonstrate not alone superior draftsman and colorist skill, the
crude pictures being both incised and painted in vegetable blues,
yellows, blacks and whites of remarkable permanence, but are peculiarly
intriguing in that they disclose suggestions of a rudimentary
semi-symbolic system of writing, apparently a step beyond primary
ideography and essentially differing from the early Egyptian phonetics,
while evincing no relationship to the Sumerian nail-writings.  I am
hoping to secure the invaluable co-operation in further research work
of our mutual friend Dr. Max Steinberger; and if only adequate
financing can be secured (and surely there should be no money
impediment in these days of fast-breeding multi-millionaires thus to
further the glorious cause of science?), am looking forward with much
interest to returning thither early in the coming year.

"It was in this field, you will remember, that the man Gentil,
concerning whom you wrote me while I was in the Broken Hill region, had
his farmstead; and, thinking you might still be interested and in
accordance with my promise, I took occasion while there to make guarded
inquiries in hope of ascertaining what eventually became of the man.

"Results, I regret, are meagre.  Officially nothing is known.  He seems
to have disappeared as suddenly and as inexplicably as he appeared in
Sankaeliland.  He was last seen apparently just prior to Bambata's
abortive outbreak, and it is suggested may have been one of the many
isolated victims of those ghastly days of terror.  Personally I am far
from convinced that this explanation is tenable.  If anyone thereabouts
enjoyed the confidence and friendship of the indigenous blacks and
shared their antipathies toward both Britisher and Boer, he would have
seemed to have done so.  He had sworn blood-brothership[1] with
Sankaeli, and unquestionably was under that old rogue's protection; and
yet I am inclined to believe, patching together as best I can chance
scraps of native talk, that he met his end by the stake within that
chief's principal kraal.  Mystery surrounds his death as it did his
life, and I doubt if aught more will be learned concerning it.  The
African hills hold their secrets well.


[1] Two small pieces of meat are secured and a sponsor for each of the
prospective blood-brothers holds one in his hand.  The
master-of-ceremonies then invokes a series of curses on either party
untrue to the blood-brothership pledge, after which a slight incision
is made in the chest of each candidate; the blood from these incisions
is smeared on the meat and each party devours that piece smeared with
the blood of the other.


"Considerable public attention has latterly been focussed on these
Sankaeliland hills, as you may have gathered from the newspaper press,
by reason of the reputed discovery in one of the major caves of a
diamondiferous clay that seemingly had been worked haphazardly and
hurriedly, and persistent rumours that a mysterious white man had been
hanging about the _locus_ some time ago and got clean away to Amsterdam
with a fortune in uncut stones.  He is reputed to have taken train from
Olifantsfontein, with an uncommonly handsome blonde companion.  The
police evidently suspected him as an I.D.B., and while he was there
went through his belongings with a fine-tooth comb, but without getting
the goods on him.  It was whispered afterward that he had had the loot
in plain sight while they were searching, painted over and used for Mah
Jong counters!  Clever, what?

"I should have liked to have come up with this person for, from what I
hear, he had spent some time knocking about the cave district, stirring
up blue clay and a diamond pipe in an ancient crater, where such a
formation would seem a geological anachronism.  Of course his only
thought would be diamonds (in which I am not in the least interested),
but he quite possibly may have run across things of scientific value
that _would_ be worth while.  However, he got clear of the country, and
there's small chance of his ever being heard of again...."




POSTSCRIPT III

TRAIL'S END

(_From Ralph Canover to Professor Mark Fullerton._)

"_Savage Club,
    "London, W.C.
        "November_ 5.


"My unsuspecting benefactor and dear Professor,

"Skimming through my _Times_ at breakfast, I read with interest your
appeal to friends of science to so assist Col. Lawrence that he may be
able to continue his explorations in the upper Amazon valley; and my
moribund conscience was so rudely jolted by sight of your name as to
offset a constitutional antipathy to pen and paper.  I have in all
honesty intended writing you--to-morrow--almost daily during the past
six months.  Procrastination always has been my favourite sin.

"No, it will serve no purpose for you to turn to the signature at the
bottom of this scrawl.  It will carry no meaning even to your wise
eyes.  And yet it is the name of one who owes everything in this world
to your kind heart and shrewd deductions from a microscopic premise.

"Still groping for a clue to the identity of the impertinent scribbler
who trespasses on your useful time?  Cast your mind back: Do you recall
a certain mild September afternoon two years ago, and a disreputable
ne'er-do-well who drifted into your Museum and to whom you gave a
heartening tot of good liquor, an excellent dinner, and a sympathetic
ear while he spun what must have sounded like a madman's preposterous
tale, illustrated with a tattered pelt of _Felis Marmorata_--the
'Marbled Cat' of the high Himalayas?

"It is that down-and-out who now has the honour to sign himself your
most grateful and devoted servant.  For it was through you Hope was
reborn for him and life given an objective that, through generous
Providence, has been more than realized.

"You were kind enough, when thus we met, to listen with more than a
scholar's interest to the rambling story of one who had plumbed the
depths of misery and was at the end of things.  It may interest you to
have the sequel, particularly as it confirms all you said that night,
and proves your deductions from very slender facts.

"I should, of course, have seen you again, but, as you must have
realized, I was in far from normal shape at that time, and the crux of
our talk was such that I tramped the night through, trying to weigh and
analyze what you had pointed out and readjust my faculties to the
amazing possibilities of conclusions I had not dreamed of.  There could
be but one outcome: I had to get back to Africa as fast as steam would
take me and put those conclusions to the test--begin my quest again,
with two years lost.

"I landed in Durban in late October, having worked my passage; and
tramped it to Sankaeliland from the mines, taking short cuts.  You may
imagine what such a hike means to a man bred horseback, especially in
stifling Christmas weather as we get it out there, but I scarcely
noticed it.  My mind was set on getting back to the familiar hills with
a minimum time loss.

"And when I did, Fate's hand was still against me.  A patrol of Burgher
recruits had taken over at the old Post--dull-witted, taciturn chaps
who took me for a suspicious sort and for a time kept inconveniently
close tab on my movements.  The farmstead in the hidden kloof was
utterly deserted, the garden choked with weeds, the fields fast going
back to jungle, the huts a litter and the house a wreck.  Nowhere could
I get news of Gentil, nor did I see a familiar face--hear a remembered
voice.  And yet when I found my way to that lonely hillside grave in
which Meisje's mother had slept for a score of years, it showed kindly
care!  No weeds trespassed near that sacred mound, on which English
roses bloomed bravely--roses and forget-me-nots.

"Of Zeete, as of the farmer, there was no trace.

"Day followed empty day.  Many theories I built up carefully in turn to
prove them worthless.  Again the Black Dog shadowed my every step.
Poignant memories banished sleep.  My little store of money quickly
melted.  I lived I know not how, and each day dragged myself to the
lily pool, where I would lie for hours outstretched on the cool grass
in the mimosa's shade, unseeing eyes turned to the brassy sky.

"It was thus I lounged one morning, despair possessing me, half-minded
to end all by a dive from the high cliff, when I noted idly a female
baboon in my old friendly banyan.  Indifferently I marked her downward
progress until, to my surprise, I saw that she clutched close an armful
of tiny arrows.  Lightly, confidently, she dropped bough by bough to
the verdant carpet, hugging her curious burden; and, all unhesitant,
entered the pool itself.  I had the wind of her and she had not caught
sight of me.  Amazed, I watched her.  She made no pause but, _taking
each step with care, went zigzagging forward into the fall itself and
disappeared!_

"My senses swam.  I stood in the scorching sun and felt it not.
Memories of Meisje crowded--how she had so strangely and swiftly come
and gone from this same sweet pool.  Could it be that the key to that
mystery was at my hand?  Shaken and stumbling, yet once more vaguely
hoping, I did what I had never thought to do before--carefully studied
the pool itself.  Submerged completely, yet plainly visible if one
looked closely, were stepping-stones in series, eight in all, leading
directly into the mist-embroidered fall!  I also breasted it, passing
'through the thundering waters' to find myself fronted by a dim vaulted
passage in the eternal rock, the end of which was blotted out by
darkness.  _The riddle of the pool was read!_

"Long I groped about in the midnight dark, bruised and battered by
frequent jarring contacts with out-jutting ledges, now feeling a
trodden path beneath my feet, now tripped by litter or choked by the
dust of ages, incapable of coherent thought, until I fell exhausted,
the air grown sickly stale.  And still an insistent inner voice urged
me on.  Painfully I retraced my steps, feeling my way, until the fall
again made music in my ears--passed once more through it, and gathered
up a store of knots to burn as torches, with which I went straightway
back.

"I need not weary you with useless detail.  The passage leads deviously
to enormous caverns, one hugely proportioned, its surface area that of
a city square, the natural ceiling lost in distance overhead, and this
colossal chamber closely set with what I at first mistook for distorted
marble columns, like hour-glasses in shape--stalactites and stalagmites
that had formed connection in their centuries' growth.

"This was in long past times, it seems, the central hidden court of the
Little People, and holds many curious mementoes of that strange race.
Students of such concerns should find them of absorbing interest.
Countless tunnels and galleries radiate from this great court.  The
whole range of hills, indeed, is honeycombed, many of the passages
extending great distances.  One gains the impression that these Bushmen
must have lived largely an underground existence, a great community of
human ants.

"One tunnel that I traced to its end was upward of twenty-four hundred
paces (roughly a mile) in length, and led to an extinct crater in the
mountainside, well watered by bubbling springs, beautiful with trees,
shrubs, grasses and brilliant flowers in great profusion, save at the
farther end, where a dull scar showed.  This I found marks
long-deserted copper workings in which were primitive tools and much
else clearly indicative of hasty abandonment.  There were even crude
wheel-less trucks of the long-lived cypress, slowly disintegrating, on
a grooved rail of ancient metal that is neither brass nor copper,
though somewhat akin to both.  Others of these vast caves had sheltered
workers in divers arts and crafts--potters and jewellers, bakers,
armourers, joiners--the weight of dead centuries heavy upon all.
Nowhere was there sign of human visitation in many, many years.

"That baboon, something told me, was one of Zeete's troop.  I counted
on finding her by following wherever it might lead.  The witch would
know what had befallen Meisje; end the racking incertitude that was
driving me almost mad.  Did she live, or was she dead as I long had
thought?  If she had heard the call of the Lords of Rest, life held
nothing more for me.  I would no more leave those sombre hills that had
been hers.  Perhaps--perhaps I would test to the uttermost the wizened
pigmy's sorceries that once I had laughed at with a fool's contempt....

"But never once did I glimpse the beast again after it had passed from
my sight in the water curtain.  It had left no spoor that I could
discern in the gloomy tunnel; nor did I hear the clamour of any of its
kind in the days that followed, in which I scrambled and groped my way
through those caveland labyrinths.  Time and again I was minded to give
over the fruitless search, yet ever came back thereto.  Sleeping or
waking, Meisje companioned me.  In dreams I heard her voice--was
comforted by her smile.  She beckoned me on.  Thus Hope was each
morning born, to die with Night.  So clear these visions were, an inner
consciousness lacking substantial reason told me she still lived and
sent her soul through space, calling to me.

"I grew a gaunt, unkempt solitary creature with matted hair and beard,
for ever haunting, ghost-like, the dusty catacombs.  That I was mad but
harmless the countryside agreed, and left me to myself (for which thank
God), while, mole-wise, I all but lived in cave and grot and tunnel,
marking off one by one as I found it and drew a blank.  The sun had
grown a stranger; the blacks had learned to shun me as a familiar of
the unquiet spirits; nor could I come near to any of the few baboons I
chanced to see, which scurried away affrighted.

"A narrow passage I had been following with nagging zeal led suddenly
late one afternoon into the pure light of open air and a secluded nook,
grass-carpeted and cool, in the mountains' shadow.  Here I decided to
rest the oncoming night, and put the billy on for a pot of tea.
Waiting for it to boil, I lay dourly brooding, blind to the charm of
that sylvan solitude.  Not even a bird note broke the soothing
stillness.  And then, like a phantom from the fading past, in
silhouette against the sunset glory of the near skyline, I marked a
gaunt baboon and knew him in a flash for faithful Nano.

"Discomfitures had taught me some discretion.  I strangled a shout of
joy and, all atremble, called to him softly.  He halted, listening.
Again I called--'Nano!  Nano!  Nano!' careful to make no move.  He
sniffed the air, warily suspicious, poised for immediate flight
advanced a few hesitant steps--halted again to peer in puzzlement
through the tangled leafage--caught scent and gravely considered
it--drew nearer and a little nearer!  My heart was in my throat, as
long as curiosity and dull remembrance urged him on whilst timorous
instinct counselled instant retreat.

"In my deer-stalking days I had well schooled myself in motionless
waiting, though never had it been so hard, nerves at the
snapping-point.  Success or failure hung on the chance whim of a
wandering beast that once, with cause, had stood in fear of me.  His
memory on that score, luckily, was less keen than mine.  Recognition
dawned at length in his little questioning eyes.  Lips curled back from
yellow fangs in a delighted grin.  And then he was grunting and
capering about me like a joyous dog, while I roughly petted him--and
would have given much for the gift of his uncouth speech.

"I never got my tea.  Nano romping ahead, we climbed a lofty wooded
peak from which cloud-swept height the country for miles around was
spread like a huge profile model.  Thence was no trail.  My hairy
guide, excitedly chattering, took nimbly to the trees and vanished in
their umbrageous maze.  Fearful of losing him, I called till the hills
echoed and re-echoed.  Presently he was back, grinning and whimpering
from above me, no doubt puzzled why I had not followed where he was
most at home.  There was no other way I quickly discovered; and,
wishing myself a Mowgli, I, too, climbed laboriously and passed from
tree to tree along thick boughs forming what, I soon realized, was a
much-travelled highway of the wildwood folk.

"Nano, always leading, more than redeemed himself.  A miracle of
patience, he never was thereafter quite lost to sight; and though his
ceaseless jabbering was unintelligible, its meanings in essence were
evident, shade by shade--caution, encouragement, vexation at my slow
progress, amusement that one could be so clumsy and so timorous on what
to him was the safe open road!

"Our arboreal pilgrimage, to my relief, was short.  Well before evening
had settled it brought us out on just such another path as that from
the mountain pool to the sheltered farmstead below, and this in turn to
the vine-screened mouth of one of the many smaller caverns.  Compared
with those I had seen, it was an insignificant little den, to which,
had I stumbled on it, I would scarce have given a glance.

"Rock-walled, low-roofed and dark, it was not more than thirty feet in
length by half that wide.  There was no exit unless by a jagged hole at
the inner end by which a sizable dog might creep to kennel.  Into this
Nano dived and I crawled after him, counting to perhaps find Zeete in
underground retreat.  No glimmer of light showed in that drain-like
burrow, yet I was well content to follow the gruntings of the old
baboon.  The passage was not over-long.  Scarcely had the enfiltering
light showed that its end was near when we emerged upon a saucer-shaped
dell plenteously grassed and on all sides girt by steeply rising hills,
a footpath straggling crookedly to a dense copse.  This, Nano, barking
excitedly, took at such pace I had to fairly run to keep up with him.
Impatient eagerness fevered my blood.  The witch had won my very warm
regard.

"Almost had we gained the grove when there came therefrom a sudden
admonishing call that seemed to stop the beating of my heart, while
instantly old Nano's chatter ceased!  Could I believe my ears?  Was I
awake, my reason unimpaired?  Did the gods favour me beyond belief? ...
Again that beloved voice, pitched on a note of question!  Nano gave
tongue excitedly and went on.  Past him I hastened headlong,
bewildering joy giving wings to my feet, yet still distrustful of my
swimming senses until I saw her running lightly to meet me, while the
soft breath of early night bore me the sweetest music ever made:

"'My lord!  My lord hath come!'

"And then she was in my arms, my cup of bliss over-brimming, the while
she laughed and wept and clung to me....  They say great happiness
kills.  I doubt it much.

"So much had we to say to one another we both for a time were dumb.  I
was more than content to hold her close, her starry eyes dewy with
happy tears for me to kiss away.

"'And thou wilt never, never leave me more?' she sobbed in happiness.
A hundred questions crowded and would have flooded forth had not come
interruption still more amazing than even reunion when I had ceased to
dream the gods held such joy for me.  A child cried lustily, and she
slipped from my encircling arm to flit ahead of me toward the grove,
wherein stood a rude hut of thorn and thatch--and on the sward in front
two chubby feet uplifted, kicking like little pistons.

"I halted thunderstruck--_the babe was white!_

"And while I stood and gaped, Meisje had swiftly stooped and the small
rosy one was gurgling in her arms.  She turned again to me, aglow with
mother love.

"'Did rowdy Nano wake the little man!' she crooned to the snuggling
mite.  'Nay, open thy blue eyes--a smile to greet thy father!'

"You should see that husky tike--little more than a yearling, and
marching about like a grenadier!  Straight and sturdy as a little
soldier, too, and quick as a flash to notice everything!

"But to my story: It was wise old Zeete who had checkmated our enemies.
Having seen us set forth, she had returned to her place in lonely
grief.  'There her spirits came to her,' my wonder-woman says; and
there is much in this beyond my understanding.  They told her (or the
dame fortunately so imagined) of the recall of Sankaeli's men, but also
that their Chinese friends had not been so dissuaded from our pursuit,
and even then danger pressed us close.  She with her baboons
immediately set forth to warn and aid us, but came too late.

"We had been set upon, as she read in the trampled track, and she must
unwittingly have passed me as I lay senseless, following fast at first
on the spoor of our frightened beasts.  The Chinese (counting on rich
reward from the old king) she came up with after night had fallen, the
Princess bound and cruelly near to death with weariness and suffering
by the way, so that her foster-mother believed her gone and took full
vengeance on the yellow cut-throats.  A poisoned lion had figured in
the coolies' plan, its rotting carcase placed near to the track,
scenting which, our horses had broken in terror.

"The outlaw band had numbered four, but others followed hard upon their
heels, so that the poor woman had been close pressed to contrive escape
from these, and not without fatal wounds.  From these she suffered
grievously, but kept life's spark aglow through a fortnight of horror
in which my brave girl companioned and cared for her, while they hid
like hunted beasts in holes and trees, sleepless and famishing save for
a few mealies the baboons contrived to fetch.

"They had at length won through to the sanctuary of the little dell
where I had found my bride, but the land was ablaze with war, and
prudence forced them for a time to lie closely hid.  Even with her last
breath the witch had cautioned Meisje to there wait patiently till love
in time should lead me to her side.

"The little sorceress had ever a strong will and much uncanny wisdom of
her years.  She had tutored my wilderness wife in much of what passes
for dread magic with ignorant folk, especially enjoining that she
should seek a silent place each evening and concentrate thought and
will on summoning me wherever I might be.  I wonder if some women are
truly clairvoyant?  She speaks of her delight _when she saw me meet
you_, and of _seeing me_ turn to Africa again!

"'And then I knew our night was almost waned,' she simply states, 'and
waited happily for thy return.'

"Much must have passed between her and her strange godmother in their
last days together that closely touched Bushman legends and the
occultism of that race.  Of these mysterious matters the greater part
she withholds even from me.  And she has suffered so much, it would be
cruel indeed to press idle curiosity.

"'The wisdom of the ages is my care,' she says seriously, 'nor may the
truths be told while yet man wars with man, straying perversely from
the paths of Right.  In time Man may come again to walk in the Light of
Truth.  Till then my lips are sealed for mankind's good.'

"Some things she has spoken of that would astound if published to the
world, and yet she holds these of small account.  Thus when I
questioned her as to her necklet of diamonds, she laughed at me as at a
child delighted with shining pebbles, and led me to an ancient place
where was great store of such, so that in this at least were made true
Zeete's words as to a Bushman treasure.

"As to one other secret passed on from her foster mother, my wife and
I, after long thought upon it, had decided to first write you.  The
mystery of that magical light intrigued me much, and this I have
learned about it: that alchemists of times long past, by some forgotten
process, I know not what, produced a rare white metal from pitchblende,
of which there are large deposits thereabouts, as well as in the Congo
valley also.  From this strange metal not only is the light derived, an
artificial illuminant as far superior to electric as that light to a
tallow dip, but seemingly its potentialities are widely diversified.
Its latent properties and possibilities should be inquired into by
competent scientists, and only with extreme precautions against
mischance, for it appears to have been employed as well as a powerful
lethal force.  The witch's wand was a minute example.  I have it now,
safe in a deposit vault.

"Development of this force for military offence might easily place in
the hands of any nation holding its secret such annihilative
superiority in wholesale man-killing that domination of the world by
that power would be easily possible.  One should hesitate long
therefore before taking the awful responsibility of loosing on the
troubled universe such a murderous weapon, while it might conceivably
be mis-used for the glut of selfish individual or national ambitions....

"I doubt, indeed, if we should have disclosed what little I now know as
to the source of the magical light had not its basic principle been, as
the witch-doctress once told me, 'life as well as death.'  It is said
to have been much employed in ancient days in combating mortal ailments
such as dread cancer; and it is in this connection primarily that we
have now about decided to invite the co-operation of such savants as
make this particular field of research their own.  In this I hope to
have your advice and helpful suggestions.  Financial requirements we
shall amply provide for; there need be no publicity on that head.

"I should also esteem it a real privilege if you would let me know what
sum will abundantly cover Col. Lawrence's needs, to supply it, through
you, anonymously, so that his work, so close to your heart, may go on
without delay.  This will but insignificantly express my deep
appreciation of your scholarly attainments so casually demonstrated in
your comments upon a certain scrap of pelt, remaking life and fortune
for

"Your devoted and most grateful servant,
    "RALPH CANOVER."



      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *



STANLEY PAUL & Co. (1928) LTD


  _List of New and Forthcoming Titles_

  _AUTUMN 1928_

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+The Undergraduate of the Eighteenth Century+

CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH, M.A.

_Edited, and with an introduction, by R. Brimley Johnson.  Illustrated.
Demy 8vo.  Cloth Gilt.  18s. net._

This gay and intimate picture of social life at the Universities will
strongly appeal to every old Oxford or Cambridge man no less than those
now resident beside the Isis or the Cam.  Nowhere else have the
manners, the dress, and the amusements of Undergraduates in olden days
been so fully and freely portrayed as in Dr. Wordsworth's charming
volume, with its humorous personalities and digressions.

Mr. Brimley Johnson has now abridged the original, somewhat voluminous,
text; rearranged and grouped the narrative under allied subjects with
directing headlines (omitting technical or official matter); and
produced a popular reissue, suited to readers of to-day, with numerous
illustrations from old prints.

It forms a unique and attractive picture of life under conditions
which, if less strenuous, were certainly more picturesque than they are
to-day; in the courts and gardens that are still the home of youth, the
nurseries of ambition.



+Harry Wilson: Thirty-five Years a Bow Street Lawyer+

FRANK E. FARNCOMBE

_Records of the Man and his Professional work.  Demy 8vo.  15s. net._

Harry Wilson was for years one of the best-known solicitors practising
in the vicinity of Bow Street.  Springing into notice through his
handling of the defence of the man accused of the "Jack the Ripper"
crimes, he quickly became noted for a keen pertinacity in defence,
while at the same time he was entrusted with many prosecutions, and
briefed counsel whose names are household words.



+Guilty or not Guilty?+

GUY B. H. LOGAN

_Author of "Masters of Crime".  12s. 6d. net._

Mr. Logan's new work deals exhaustively with twelve cases of mysterious
murder, and throws fresh light on crimes which have long puzzled the
police authorities and intrigued the public mind.  He reveals new facts
concerning the murder of Amelia Jeffs in an empty house at West Ham,
the double crime at Hoxton in July, 1872.  The author writes with
inside knowledge of various sensational cases, and the book will be a
notable contribution to the literature of murder.



+Who's Who in America+

_Vol. XV., 1928-1929.  Edited by Albert Nelson Marquis.  Size 9 x 7
inches.  Cloth.  2,300 pages.  37s. 6d. net._

A biological dictionary of over 27,000 notable living Americans--men
and women--in all parts of the world.  The American "Who's Who" should
have its place on the reference shelves of all business offices, clubs,
hotels, newspaper offices, public libraries, and similar institutions.



+Splendid Sons of Sin+

DR. A. S. RAPPOPORT

_Author of "Love Affairs of the Vatican", "Famous Artists and Their
Models", etc.  Large Demy 8vo.  18s. net._

In the annals of history we read of numerous men and women who,
although children of sin, were not only mentally and morally very
capable but who also made history.  This should give food for
reflection to psychologists, physiologists, and jurists alike.  In the
present work, the author relates the histories and achievements of six
such splendid sons of sin, and they form an interesting contribution to
the by-ways of history.



+Masters of Crime+

GUY B. H. LOGAN

_Author of "Guilty or not Guilty?"  12s. 6d. net._

A careful and exhaustive study of the most notorious malefactors in the
murder annals of England and France.  New light is thrown on the
"Ripper" mystery, while the true story of Troppmann's murder of the
Kinck family near Paris is related for the first time.  The author has
had access to reports and documents not open to the average writer, and
is able to disclose facts never previously recorded.  The result is a
work of unique value.



+Round the Green Cloth+

S. BEACH CHESTER

_Author of "Diners  Deux", etc.  Demy 8vo.  10s. 6d. net.
Frontispiece._

_"Daily Mail" Special Correspondent for France and Spain._

This is the most sensational book of gambling adventures ever written.
Member of a well-known family, whose history covers several centuries,
the author has had a somewhat turbulent career, has been decorated by a
foreign Government, and has been loved or hated by women in every rank
of Society.  His experiences in the most famous gambling centres of
Europe (of which he has a more complete knowledge than any other
writer) throw fiction into the shade.  This book provides a thrill of
intense human interest in every page.




STANLEY PAUL'S LATEST NOVELS

_Crown 8vo.  Cloth.  7s. 6d. net._

+Unforbidden Fruit+

WARNER FABIAN

_Author of "Flaming Youth", "Sailors' Wives", "Summer Bachelors", etc._

Three young women work out their "preparation for life" on the theory
that nothing is forbidden to those who are not afraid, and that
anything is worth trying once.  Starr Mowbray, a typical
excitement-eater, has a desperate flirtation with a young foreign
officer whom she had met abroad.  Sylvia Hartnett compromises herself
with a college don.  Verity Clarke encounters true romance in the form
of an old-fashioned Victorian love-affair.  The ideas and indiscretions
of these three girls form a highly diverting story, which is also a
daring portrait of contemporary Youth.



+The King's Passport+

H. BEDFORD-JONES

_Author of "The Kasbah Gate", "Rodomont", etc._

An unknown messenger is required by the French King in order to upset a
certain marriage put forward by Richelieu--Mazarin is secretly behind
the scheme, backed by the Queen, who hates Richelieu.  A political
prisoner escapes from the Bastille, and by chance secures a very
special passport intended for this unknown messenger.  Mazarin suspects
the real identity of the escaped prisoner.  Then Richelieu sends his
people after the messenger.  The young lady concerned in the marriage
of convenience manages to join the messenger, whose work is to keep her
out of Richelieu's hands until a certain date--after which the marriage
would be useless and would be abandoned.  The story is full of movement
and vivid incident, and the three principal men, the two women, both
masquerading as men, and the two priests, are drawn with strong
contrast.



+Blue Mist and Mystery+

CECIL ADAIR

_Author of "Gabriel's Garden", "The Mist Pool", etc., etc._

The last descendants of two ancient families meet by chance--both of
them have been battered by Fate in the War.  The mystery concerns a
girl and two men, treasure-trove, and the spell of Blue Mist Valley.
This unusual story, with its romantic setting and its old-world touches
of romance, will make an instant appeal to all readers.



+The Merchant of Happy Endings+

MICHAEL KENT

The scene of this story is in Corsica and deals with the Gilbertian
conditions of the island--a patriarchal life in a land of automatic
telephones--a bandit hiding for years from the police and being at the
same time the unofficial judge and protector of the countryside,
bringing aid to crashed airmen and holding levees to receive famous
guests in the heart of the _maguis_.  All the separate events,
incongruously tragic and farcical as they are, are true, have happened,
and may happen any day.



+Natasha+

MARJORIE WILLIAMSON

A vividly written story concerning the love intrigues of two brothers
of contrasting characters, the elder, strong, virile, self-controlled;
the younger, sentimental, spoilt, and somewhat effeminate.  Natasha
plays havoc with both of them--she is a fascinating mixture of worldly
wisdom and suppressed emotions, due to her American father and Russian
mother.  The plot is out of the ordinary run and is certain to make a
strong appeal.



+The Love Call+

IVY M. CLAYTON

_Author of "Desert Flames", etc._

Joy Dearheart, or Joy-heart as she is often called, is a rich and
lovely girl who, through the death and failure of her father, finds
herself left with a tiny income, a derelict old farm, and her aged
great-aunt Daisy, who has mothered her since infancy, to support.  How
she settles in Honey Patch Farm and takes up flower farming, her
experiences in the dell attached, known as the Goblin's Glen, where she
first hears "love's call", her brushes with the cantankerous old man
who is her near neighbour, her interest in his barrister nephew, and
the sensation she all innocently creates among the rural and social
inhabitants of the pretty Hampshire village in which she makes her home
provide the theme of an entertaining tale.



+Isle of Innocence+

L. NOEL

_Author of "The Caid", "The Veil of Islam", etc._

Clive Davenham, handsome, fascinating, and self-indulgent, has been
spoilt by every woman he has met.  A scandal, and a narrowly-averted
tragedy, drive him, conscience-stricken, from London to travel the
world in the company of old John Landor, half-mystic, half-explorer,
intent on solving the secrets of the ancient civilizations of
Polynesia.  Out there, Clive is marooned deliberately by Landor on an
isolated island; for Landor believes that solitude alone will save
Davenham from himself.  But the old man, despite his wisdom has
forgotten Fate, which ordains that on the island there lives Innocence,
a young English girl stranded in solitude by earlier events which are
but an echo of those in which Davenham himself has played a part.  The
girl is pure savage, possessed of the innocence that is ignorance.  The
lives of these two, first on that far-away island, and later in the
London Society to which Davenham, released from durance, presently
returns, provides a drama of contrasting personalities, and of
atavistic savagery tamed in the end by love.



+The Great Hold-Up Mystery+

WILFRID USHER

When Peter Brown, on holiday in a Cornish fishing village, went one
night to the rescue of a man who was being attacked by three ruffians
on the quay, he had little idea of the amazing adventures into which it
would lead him.  A murder, followed by an exciting police chase across
country, was but the prelude to a deadly struggle with a gang of
international crooks, bent on exploiting the genius of a half-mad
scientist.  Peter is captured, but escaping through the courage and
resolution of a girl, he finally tracks the gang to the Island of Sark,
where he discovers their secret, and with the help of an American
tourist, he engages in a thrilling encounter with the assembled gang.



+Bulldog and Rats+

MARCEL ALLAIN

_Author of "The Revenge of Fantmas", etc._

This story centres round Fantmas, the Lord of Terror, Juve the
detective, and journalist Fandor.  The two latter are rescued from a
wrecked aeroplane by a French torpedo-boat.  Then the scene shifts to
London, where Fantmas appears, and an amazing complication of plot and
counter-plot follows.  Juve and Fandor fall into the arch-criminal's
hands, and there are, if possible, more hair-raising escapes in this
narrative than in those that have gone before.



+Patrick Helps+

ANTHONY ARMSTRONG

("A.A." of PUNCH)

_Author of "Patrick--Undergraduate", "Patrick Engaged", etc.  3s. 6d.
net._

Those who remember with pleasure the irresponsible and irrepressible
Patrick will welcome this new book by Mr. Anthony Armstrong.  As in the
two previous volumes, the well-known humour of "A.A." of Punch is
sustained throughout.  Patrick and his companion, the fatuous Chumley,
set out with the intention of helping an artist friend to fame, but
find themselves involved, as usual, in a series of highly amusing
adventures.  Chuckles are legion, and loud laughs abound.



+Fishke the Lame+

MENDELE MOCHER SEFORIM

This is a simple story, beautifully written, abounding in humour and
pathos.  Its _dramatis person_ are the members of a notorious gang of
brigands.  The author, whose work is now made accessible to English
readers for the first time, is known to those conversant with the
original as the Jewish Cervantes.



+The Viper+

ROY HORNIMAN

_Author of "Israel Rank", "Bellamy the Magnificent", etc._

This practised writer has given us a striking and convincing study of a
master-criminal, Frisby, who is intelligent and attractive, slightly
sentimental, but who possesses a monster of evil.  He marries and has
one son and, influenced by him, both mother and boy become criminals.
He later murders them and remarries for money.  He naturally has to go
warily, but eventually is caught, and his wildly exciting adventures do
not allow one's interest to flag.



+Kenya Calling+

NORA K. STRANGE

_Author of "A Wife in Kenya", "Cynthia Abroad", etc._

This stirring story of life in Kenya Colony is probably the best work
of this popular novelist.  The delicately-drawn personalities of the
different women, and the strong contrast in their love affairs, will
charm the thousands of Miss Strange's admirers.



+The Carbonari+

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

The continued exploits of "Monsieur Jackal".  This is the second of the
wonderful series entitled "The Mohicans of Paris", which originally ran
as a feuilleton in Dumas's popular journal "Le Mousqitelaire".  It is a
fine story of Paris when it was "a city full of shadows cast by
occasional oil lamps, hanging on strings, or torches carried by fearful
pedestrians".  Monsieur Jackal, the central figure, whose advice
"cherchez la femme", was caught up all over Paris, to be quoted
throughout the world, was the forerunner of Gaboriau's "M. Lecoq", of
Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes", _et hoc genus omne_.



+Sweetheart of the Valley+

EDITH NEPEAN

_Author of "Welsh Love", etc._

The purple-grey Welsh mountains, arched like a mighty bow from sea to
sea, the warm caress of evening sunlight, turning gorse and bracken,
brooding wastes and dizzy precipices, into dazzling caverns of
burnished gold.  On such a night Deio Ffoulkes sees Bronwen stretched
across a brown ledge of rock overhanging the sea.  Deio adores her with
a savage passion which robs him of discretion and reason.



+The Marbled Catskin+

CHARLES HARRISON GIBBONS

_Author of "A Sourdough Samaritan", etc. etc._

Ralph Canover of the South African Constabulary while reconnoitring
discovers a white girl bathing in a mountain pool.  She is of great
beauty; a string of beads worn round her neck, a girdle round her waist
from which suspends a sporran--of a marbled catskin, is her whole
attire.  He falls madly in love with her and she, reciprocating his
affection, introduces him to the Little People of the mountains over
whom she reigns as queen.

Beset by enemies, Zulus and Chinese, this story tells how Canover
fights for her, loses her, and, when at the end of his tether, finally
finds her again--and happiness.


      *      *      *      *      *


THE COLLECTORS' SERIES

_Very fully illustrated.  Large Crown 8vo.  New Editions 6s. net._


+The ABC About Collecting+

SIR JAMES YOXALL

_Fifth Edition.  Numerous line drawings and thirty-two pages of
half-tone illustrations.  Large Crown 8vo. size._

The subjects include China, Clocks, Prints, Books, Pictures, Furniture,
and Violins.

"Every page is an inspiration to a young collector."--_Evening
Standard_.



+More About Collecting+

SIR JAMES YOXALL

_Fourth Edition.  Numerous illustrations in line and half-tone.  Large
Crown 8vo. size._

General Hints and Warnings--Furniture--Pictures and
Miniatures--Earthenware and Porcelain--Old English and Irish
Glass-ware--Books--Prints--Autographs, and Miscellaneous Collecting.




THE INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY

Edited by F. L. Lawson-Johnston, B.A.

_Small crown 8vo.  Dark blue embossed cloth.  Gold Design.  With
frontispieces and coloured jackets.  2s. 6d. net._

_New Titles._


+A Dead Woman's Wish+

EMILE ZOLA

_Translated by Count S. C. de Soissons, and with an Introduction by S.
J. Adair Fitz-Gerald._



+Hindu Tales+

FROM THE SANSKRIT

_Translated by P. W. Jacob.  Edited with an Introduction by C. A.
Rylands._



+Little Novels of Spain+

CERVANTES AND OTHERS

_Selected, edited, and with an Introduction by F. L. Lawson-Johnston._

Tales, mainly picaresque, by the great Spanish novelists.


      *      *      *      *      *


MISCELLANEOUS

+The Easy Gardening Book+

E. T. BROWN

_Illustrated with numerous line blocks.  F'cap 8vo.  2s. 6d. net._

A practical and useful book covering all branches of gardening.  It is
arranged on an easy-reference plan, contains many diagrams, and should
be a welcome guide to all enthusiastic amateurs.



2s. net.

+Drawing-Room Entertainments+

  CATHARINE EVELYN, ROBERT OVERTON, CLARE
  SHIRLEY AND OTHERS

A new and fourth edition of this popular collection of short plays and
dialogues for amateurs.  Three delightful new playlets have been added.



1s. net.

+Young Women Out of Love+

_By the Author of "Blondes Prefer Gentlemen".  Also cloth.  2s. net._

A commentary on the genius peculiar to Michael Aden.


      *      *      *      *      *


  STANLEY PAUL'S
  WORLD-FAMOUS 2/6 SERIES

Crown 8vo. Cloth.  Pictorial Wrappers.

LATEST ADDITIONS

  +Cynthia Abroad+ . . . NORA K. STRANGE
  +Happy Chance+ . . . CECIL ADAIR
  +The Veil of Islam+ . . . L. NOEL
  +Iridescence+ . . . CECIL ADAIR
  +Claud, The Charmer+ . . . E. EVERETT-GREEN
  +Dreamland and Dawn+ . . . CECIL ADAIR


      *      *      *      *      *


STANLEY PAUL'S

NEW SIXPENNY SERIES

_Splendidly produced.  Clear Type.  Sell-at-Sight Covers._

  1 +The Lion's Skin+ RAFAEL SABATINI
  2 +The Love of His Life+ EFFIE ADELAIDE ROWLANDS
  3 +Under the Incense Trees+ CECIL ADAIR
  4 +Fine Feathers+ WILLIAM LE QUEUX
  5 +Gabriel's Garden+ CECIL ADAIR
  6 +Love's Mask+ EFFIE ADELAIDE ROWLANDS
  7 +The Dean's Daughter+ CECIL ADAIR
  8 +The Spell of the Jungle+ ALICE PERRIN

(_Others in preparation_)

The Gainsborough Press, St. Albans.  Fisher, Knight & Co., Ltd.


      *      *      *      *      *


LATEST SUCCESSFUL NOVELS

AT ALL LIBRARIES

  +KENYA CALLING+ Nora K. Strange
  +UNFORBIDDEN FRUIT+ Warner Fabian
  +THE VIPER+ Roy Horniman
  +SHIMMERING WATERS+ Cecil Adair
  +THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURE+ Stephen King-Hall
  +THE KING'S PASSPORT+ H. Bedford Jones
  +UNCLE QUAYLE+ E. Everett-Green
  +THE LOVE CALL+ Ivy M. Clayton
  +THE CLEVER ONE+ F. Morton Howard
  +PATRICK HELPS+ Anthony Armstrong ("A.A." of Punch)



STANLEY PAUL & Co. (1928) LTD.






[End of The Marbled Catskin, by Charles Harrison Gibbons]
