Chapter Nineteen.
The Forest.
“And all this time we have been forgetting our picnic,” reminded Verna merrily.
They undid the saddle bags and spread out the contents. Nothing had been forgotten, for had not she herself packed them?
“Why, this might be an up-the-river jaunt,” said Denham, as the appetising daintiness of each article of food revealed itself. And then these two healthy people, realising perfectly that there is a time for the material as well as for the romantic, fell-to with a will.
Not much was said as they took the homeward way; for one thing, it is difficult to converse when you are riding single file, and to keep a bright look out for projecting boughs or tangling trailers calculated to sweep you from your saddle in summary and unpleasant fashion at the same time. Yet there was a glow of happiness in the hearts of both, that could do without words. Again, as on their way forth, Denham was contemplating his guide with feelings of intense admiration and love; but now, superadded, the exultation of security. And yet—we have said that he was a singularly modest man, for one of his personal gifts and material advantages—he still found himself wondering what a woman like this could see in him.
“You’re not conversational, Alaric,” said Verna, over her shoulder. “What’s the subject of the meditation?”
“I ought to answer ‘you—and you only,’ but it wouldn’t be true. The fact is, I have been obliged to divide contemplation of you with an enduring and superhuman effort to save myself from dangling—an executed corpse—from any one of these confounded trailers.”
She laughed—merrily, happily.
“Well, I can’t spare you yet. Look! the stuff’s thinning here. You can come alongside again.”
Hardly had he done so than both horses cocked their ears, snuffing uneasily.
“Why, what is it?” exclaimed Denham, rising in his stirrups to peer forward. “By Jove! It’s a skeleton. Let’s investigate.”
He dismounted, and helped Verna from the saddle. They were careful to hitch up the horses, and then went forward.
As Denham had said, it was a skeleton, or rather what was left of one. The skull was separated from the trunk and the dry rib-bones were mostly scattered, while those of the limbs still held together. But just beside it was the unmistakable remnant of what had been a fire, and a large one at that.
“What does it mean?” said Denham. “Some poor devil got lost, and died of starvation beside his own fire?”
Verna shook her head. She was gazing down thoughtfully at the white bones and their surroundings.
“That’s not the reading of it,” she said. “That’s no white man’s skull. Look at the teeth. Further, its owner’s end was not starvation.”
“How knowest thou that, O Sherlock Holmes up to date?” Denham had picked up the skull and was examining it with interest. “At any rate, he didn’t die from a bang on the head.”
“No; but he was killed, all the same, by others.”
“Sherlock Holmes again. Go on.”
“Well, no self-respecting native with the fear of Inswelaboya and other horrors of the night before his eyes, that is to say, any native, would dream of coming in here alone for anything you could offer him.”
“Wait a bit, Sherlock,” laughed the other. “I think I’ve got you on one point. You said ‘horrors of the night.’ How do you know it was night?”
“I deduce it from the size of the fire. Such a big one as it was would never have been built in the daytime. There must have been several in it; the ground is too dry for tracks to show, but for some reason or other this one has been killed by the rest.”
“Verna, you are simply wonderful. Talk about woodcraft!”
She looked pleased.
“Well,” she said, “I know the people and their ways. Not only that”—looking rather serious—“I hear and overhear things that you wouldn’t understand, or rather wouldn’t be able to get behind even if you had a fair amount of the language at your disposal, and you’re not making a bad progress under my poor tuition, Alaric.”
“Delighted. Only it isn’t ‘poor.’”
She made laughing rejoinder, and these two happy people talked on lightly, or half seriously by turns, rejoicing ill their newly-welded happiness. And the skull stared drearily up from the ground, sad relic of a fellow-creature done to death here in the forest gloom amid every circumstance of torment and blood.
“Hallo! what’s the matter with the gees?” said Denham suddenly. “They seem unhappy about something, and it can’t be only about this old skull.”
For the horses were showing great uneasiness, snorting and snuffing and striving to free themselves.
“They’ve seen or scented something,” pronounced Verna.
“Well, we’d better investigate,” said Denham, holding ready the small bore, yet hard-hitting, rifle he had brought with him in view of “specimens,” and advancing in the direction to which the horses’ fears pointed. “Keep back, Verna. It may be a snake or a leopard.”
Hardly were the words uttered than a serpentine head and neck of a dull yellow colour rose up out of the herbage, then subsided, with a half-startled hiss. Denham felt his sleeve plucked, as though to arrest his advance.
“Leave it, and come away,” Verna whispered. “It’s the indhlondhlo. They’re frightfully dangerous.”
“Leave it?” he whispered back. “Why, it’s the very thing I’ve been hoping to come upon all these weeks! Leave it? Not for anything.”
“Not for me?”
“For you? Wait a bit, Verna, and follow my plan. You’ll see something directly. Take the rifle”—handing it to her—“go a few yards back, and when I clench my open hand behind me, like this, shoot. Aim at the lowest part of the neck so as not to spoil the skin. But don’t make any sudden movement whatever you do.”
His nerves were thrilling now with excitement suppressed but intense. All the “collector” was predominant; he only saw before him the “specimen,” the rare “specimen,” which he had coveted so long in vain. Dangerous! Well, many wild animals were that, but they were “collected” all the same.
“But I warn you it’s deadly dangerous,” she repeated; yet she carried out his orders implicitly.
Denham began to whistle in a low, but exquisitely clear tone. This he raised gradually, but always continuous, and never sounding a false note. The effect was magical. The yellow head and neck shot up again above the herbage, waved a moment, then remained perfectly still. No hissing or hostile sign proceeded from the entranced reptile, for entranced it certainly was. Verna waiting, the rifle held ready, was entranced too, and as those sweet, clear notes swelled by degrees higher and higher to sink in faultlessly harmonised modulation, then to rise again, something of an eerie magnetism thrilled through her being as though she shared the influence with the formidable and deadly reptile thus held in thrall. Moments seemed hours. Would he never give the signal? A little more of this and even her nerves would be too much strung to reply to it.
The melody rose higher and higher, but always correspondingly clear. More of the reptile’s length towered up now. Without taking her eyes off it, Verna saw the hand behind Denham close. Her finger pressed the trigger. The yellow neck flung back with a quick, whip-like movement, and there was a rustling among the herbage which told its own tale.
“Did you hit?” whispered Denham, without turning his head.
“Oh yes; you can never make any mistake about that when you’re behind a rifle. But—”
She broke off in amazement. The other had gone quite white, or at any rate as white as his bronze sunburn would allow. He seemed aware of it himself.
“You did it magnificently,” he said, passing a hand over his eyes as though to clear them. “You know,” he went on, half in apology, half in explanation, “that sort of thing takes it out of one. It isn’t only the musical part of it. A certain amount of magnetism, of expenditure of force, comes in. But let’s inspect the quarry.”
“Careful, dearest. We’d better make sure it’s quite dead. They are frightfully venomous.”
“Wherefore you want to take the lead,” flinging a restraining arm around her. “That won’t do at all.”
But all danger was over. Verna’s bullet had severed the spinal cord. The reptile was dead, but the muscular vitality kept its coils writhing in a manner suggestive of lingering life. All the collector again was uppermost in Denham as he contemplated the writhing booty. He saw it already carefully and naturally set up in his museum.
“Can’t be less than seven feet,” he said, turning it about gingerly with a stick. “But, darling, what a dead shot you are! All my best specimens you obtain for me.”
“But I shouldn’t have obtained this one if you hadn’t kept it still in the first instance. Alaric, you never told me you added snake-charming to your other accomplishments. Do you know, though, if it had been anybody else I should have thought it decidedly uncanny. Have you done much of it?”
“Only tried it once before in my life. Then it came to me as a sudden idea. I thought I’d experimentalise again in this instance. I happen to be able to whistle rather above the average, so I was always careful to keep the note clear. I had a sort of feeling that the least break would destroy the spell at once. By the way, think there’s another anywhere about?—they say snakes go in couples.”
“No, no, no!” she answered, instinctively slipping a restraining hand beneath his arm. “Be content with this one. Besides, we have got to get it home.”
“So we have, by Jove!” with a glance up at the sun. “Now let me think of the best way to work. The horses won’t stick it near them, I’m afraid. But this is worth having, and no mistake. They grow larger than this, though, don’t they, Verna?”
“Yes,” she answered, with a touch of anxiety. “But they are very rare and very dangerous. A snake isn’t like a lion or anything of that sort. He’s about ten times as quick, and offers no mark for a bullet, and if you use shot you spoil the skin. No; be content with this one.”
“Why, you sworn big-game huntress, you talk with weighty wisdom. Now I am still debating the difficult problem of how to get this specimen home.”
“Nkose! Nkosazana!”
Both started. In their preoccupation they had been totally unaware of the presence of any third person. They looked up to become aware of the presence of such, in the person of a tall Zulu, and he Mandevu. The appearance of the latter caused Denham some vague uneasiness. It seemed as though this man were dogging him. The next words were not calculated to allay the feeling.
“That was a great snake,” he said, “and well killed. Whau! when last I saw a snake bewitched like that it was not so well killed, it was cut nearly in half. Nkose must be isanusi to have the power of keeping a snake—two snakes—still in such wise.”
Verna translated this for Denham’s benefit, and translated it well, word for word. Inwardly it puzzled her a little, for it seemed to convey some hidden meaning. But to her companion the words were disquieting, to say the least of it, and more than ever confirmed the idea that the Zulu was following him from place to place with a purpose.
“Tell him, Verna,” he said, “that I want this taken home. If he has any boys he can fetch them along, and they shall be well paid, nor will I forget himself.”
This was put. Mandevu thought he could find the boys—there was a kraal a little way off. He would see. This Verna knew to be absolutely untrue, but Denham was delighted. He presented Mandevu with a half-sovereign, intimating that there was more where that came from when the service required should be accomplished. That worthy strode off into the forest on the spot.
Verna was rather silent as they sat and waited. That curious instinctive consciousness of being watched or followed was upon her. She did not believe that Mandevu had come upon them by mere chance or that he was alone. She remembered their meeting with him near Sapazani’s kraal, and also that Denham had run against him twice at Ezulwini. Now if they, or either of them, were being watched, to what end? And here she owned herself puzzled.
Presently Mandevu reappeared with two boys. Meanwhile Denham had been doctoring his prize with some subtle chemical substance by way of preservative. He did not notice that none of them looked in the direction of the skeleton, plainly visible from there. He was too intent upon his new find. But Verna did. However, as she had said, she knew the people, so forbore to remark upon it. Yet a muttered exclamation on the part of one of the two did not escape her.
“Whau! The snake of Sebela! It, too, is dead.”
And hearing it, a good deal of the mystery of the skeleton was solved. For she had known Sebela—alive. The forest had its secrets. Its shades witnessed scenes intensely human—dark as well as golden.