Chapter Twenty Four.
The Two Turret-Heads.
“Hurrah! The scent is getting warm,” cried Sellon, as winding round a spur they came into full view of a huge coffee-canister-shaped mountain.
It was the end of the third day’s trek. Making an early start from the snug camping-place where we last saw them they had pushed steadily on until the heat of the day became too oppressive. Then after a long rest they had resumed their march, and now it was evening.
“Yes, but it’ll have to get warmer still to be of much use,” replied Renshaw. “Look! There’s the other turret-head.”
High aloft, rising from behind the slope of the first, a great “elbow” of cliff started into view. Then a turn of their road once more hid it from sight.
“There are the two referred to by poor old Greenway,” said Renshaw. “The third, the smaller one, lies beyond them to the north-west.”
“Eh? Then why on earth are we going in slap the opposite direction?”
For the “poort” they had been threading here came to an abrupt termination, splitting off into a gradually ascending kloof on each side of the first of the two great mountains. Without a moment’s hesitation Renshaw had taken the left-hand one—heading indeed south-westerly.
“You can’t get anywhere by the other way, Sellon. Nothing but blind alleys ending in a krantz.”
Half an hour or so of rough uphill travelling, and they halted on a grassy nek. And now the two great mountains stood forth right against their line of march. Rising up, each in a steep, unbroken grassy slope, they could not have been less than three thousand feet from the valley which girdled their base like the trench of an old Roman encampment. The crest of each was belted around by a smooth perpendicular wall of cliff of about a third of the height of the mountain itself, gleaming bronze red in the shimmering glow, barred here and there with livid perpendicular streaks, showing where a colony of aasvogels had found a nesting-place, possibly from time immemorial, among the ledges and crannies upon its inaccessible face.
“By Jove!” cried Sellon, as, after a few minutes’ halt, they rode along the hillside opposite to and beneath the two majestic giants. “By Jove, but I never saw such an extraordinary formation! Some of those turret-heads we passed on our way down to Selwood’s were quaint enough—but these beat anything. Why, they’re as like as two peas. And—the size of them. I say, though, what a view of the country we should get from the top.”
“Should! Yes, if we could only reach it. But we can’t. The krantz is just as impracticable all round as on this side. I tried the only place that looked like a way, once. It’s round at the back of the second one. There’s a narrow rocky fissure all trailing with maidenhair-fern—masses and masses of it. Well, I suppose I climbed a couple of hundred feet, and had to give up. Moreover, it took me the best part of the day to come down again, for if I hadn’t called all my nerve into play, and patience too, it would only have taken a fraction of a second—and—the fraction of every bone in my anatomy. No. Those summits will never be trodden by mortal foot—unless some fellow lands there in a balloon, that is.”
An hour of further riding and they had reached the extreme end of the second gigantic turret. Here again was a grassy nek, connecting the base of the latter with the rugged and broken ridges on the left. Hitherto they had been ascending by an easy gradient. Now Renshaw, striking off abruptly to the right, led the way obliquely down a steep rocky declivity. Steeper and steeper it became, till the riders deemed it advisable to dismount and lead. Slipping, scrambling, sliding among the loose stones, the staunch steeds stumbled on. Even the pack-horse, a game little Basuto pony, appointed to that office by reason of his extra sure-footedness, was within an ace of coming to grief more than once, while Sellon’s larger steed actually did turn a complete somersault, luckily without sustaining any injury, but causing his owner to bless his stars he was on his own feet at the time. The second great turret-head, foreshortened against the sky, now disappeared, shut back from view by the steep fall of the ground.
“We have touched bottom at last,” said Renshaw, as, to the unspeakable relief of the residue of the party—equine no less than human—comparatively level ground was reached. But the place they were now in looked like nothing so much as a dry stony river-bed. Barely a hundred yards in width, it was shut in on either side by gloomy krantzes, sheering up almost from the level itself.
“What a ghastly hole!” said Maurice, whom the dismal aspect of the gorge depressed. “How much further are these tunnel-like infernos going to last, Fanning? I swear it felt like a glimpse of daylight again, when we were riding up there past the two canister-headed gentry just now.”
“I shouldn’t have thought you were such an imaginative chap, Sellon.”
“Well, you see, this everlasting feeling of being shut in is dismal work. Beastly depressing, don’t you know.”
“You must make up your mind to it a little longer. There’s a water-hole about an hour from here, and there we’ll off-saddle and lie by for a snooze. By the way, it’s dry here, isn’t it?”
“Ghastly! It looks like a place where a stream should be running, too.”
“Well, I’ve seen such a roaring, racing, mountainous torrent galloping down here, that there wasn’t foothold for man or beast anywhere between these krantzes. By-the-by, you may devoutly pray that there’s no rain during the next few days. A thunder-storm in the mountains higher up would set the whole of this place humming with water.”
The sun had left them, and the grey dead silence of the savage defile seemed to echo back the tones of their voices and the clink of the horses’ hoofs, with abnormal clearness. Sellon eyed the grim rock walls towering over their heads, and growled.
“Well, it’s a beastly place, as I said before. And talking about water, that’s the worst of this country—you always have either not enough or else too much of it. All the same, I’m glad to hear we shall soon have some to dilute our grog with tonight. This rattling over stones is dry and throaty work, and the water in your leathern thing must have touched boiling point by now. What’s the row?”
The last came in a quick, startled tone. Renshaw had suddenly slid from his saddle, and was picking up some of the large stones which lay in such plentiful profusion. As he arose from this occupation a great rolling, writhing shape became apparent upon a sandspit barely a dozen yards off. Up went the hideous head into the air, waving to and fro above the great heaving coil, and the cruel eyes scintillated with a baleful fire. The horses backed and shied in alarm, snorting violently. Shorter and shorter became the movements of the head, and the forking tongue protruded as the formidable reptile emitted a bloodcurdling hiss. Maurice Sellon felt himself shuddering with horror and repulsion as he gazed for the first time upon the glistening, check-patterned coils of a large python.
Whizz! Whack! The stone launched from Renshaw’s practised hand just grazed the waving neck, knocking splinters from the rock behind. With another appalling hiss, the creature, its head still aloft, began to uncoil, as if with the object of rushing upon its antagonist.
Whack! With unerring aim, with the velocity of a catapult, the second stone came full in contact with the muscular writhing neck. The frightful head dropped as if by magic, and the great scaly coils heaved and sprawled about on the sand in a dying agony.
“Broken his neck,” said Renshaw, cautiously approaching the expiring reptile, and letting into him with the remaining stones he held in his left hand. “Python. Twelve feet if he’s an inch.”
“Good old shot! First-rate!” cried Maurice, enthusiastically. “I say, old chap, I envy you. A great wriggling brute like that makes me sick only to look at him. Pah!” he added, with a shudder.
“Look out for his mate,” said Renshaw, remounting. “Pythons often go in couples. And I am sorry to say there are a good many snakes about here.”
“Baugh! Bau—augh!”
The loud sonorous bark echoed forth in startling suddenness among the overhanging cliffs. But it didn’t seem to come from high overhead. It sounded almost in their path.
“Baboons!” said Renshaw. “They must be all round our water-hole. There they are. No—on no account fire.”
The poort here widened out. Grassy slopes arose to the base of the cliffs. In the centre lay a rocky pool, whose placid surface glittered mirror-like in the gloaming. But between this and the horsemen was a crowd of dark, uncouth shapes. Again that loud warning bark sounded forth—this time overhead, but so near that it struck upon the human ear as almost menacing.
“Baboons, eh?” said Sellon, catching sight of the brutes. “I’m going to charge them.”
Renshaw smiled quietly to himself.
“Charge away,” he said. “But whatever you do, don’t fire a shot. It may bring down upon us a very different sort of obstructive than a clompje of baviaans, and then this undertaking is one more added to the list of failures, even if we get out with whole skins.”
But Maurice hardly heard him to the end, as, spurring up his horse, he dashed straight at the troop of baboons. The latter, for their kind, were abnormally large. There might have been about threescore of the great ungainly brutes, squatting around on the rocks which overhung the pool.
As the horseman galloped up they could be seen baring their great tusks, grinning angrily. But they did not move.
Sellon had not bargained for this. The great apes, squatted together, showing an unmoved front to the aggressor, looked sufficiently formidable, not to say threatening. Sellon’s pace slowed down to a walk before he got within sixty yards of them. Then he halted and sat staring irresolutely at the hideous beasts. Still they showed no sort of disposition to give way. For a few moments both parties stood thus eyeing each other.
All of a sudden, led by about a dozen of the largest, the whole troop of hairy monsters came shambling forward—gibbering and gnashing their great tusks in unpleasantly suggestive fashion. A second more, and Sellon would have turned tail and fled ignominiously, when—
Whizz! Whack-whack! whack! A perfect shower of sharp stones came pelting into the thick of the ugly crowd with the swiftness and accuracy of a Winchester rifle, knocking out eyes, battering hairy limbs, playing havoc among them, like a charge of grape-shot. With yells of pain and terror, the brutes turned and fled, scampering up the rocks in all directions.
Renshaw, guessing the turn events were likely to take, had quietly dismounted, and, filling his hands and pockets with stones, had advanced to the support of his now discomfited friend.
“Those brutes don’t understand us quite,” he said, after the roar of laughter evoked by this sudden turn in the tide of affairs had subsided. “One shot would have sent them scampering, but we dared not fire it. They are not used to the human form divine in this wilderness, but they won’t forget that bombardment in a hurry.”
“By Jingo! no. Fancy being obstructed by a herd of monkeys. All the same, old chap, they did look ugly sitting there champing their tusks at one like that.”
“So they did. Now we’ll let our horses drink, and then adjourn to our sleeping-place. We mustn’t camp too near the water, because the krantzes swarm with tigers (leopards), to say nothing of worse cattle, who might interfere with us if we kept them from their nightly drink. And we can’t light a fire to-night.”