Perhaps that other consideration had occurred to him. Decidedly she would be in the way—under certain circumstances.
“Oh well, it doesn’t matter,” rejoined Verna tranquilly. “I’m going, anyhow.”
Chapter Five.
The Temptation.
Tall tree-trunks, straight standing or curved; a tangle of creepers and undergrowth; long rank grass, and a general effluvium of decay and stuffiness unpleasantly suggestive of fever—such were the general features of the Lumisana forest.
Its depths were gloomy and desolate to the last degree, and seldom penetrated. The natives carefully avoided the place, and if they did enter it would never do so except in groups. It was the haunt of dangerous snakes, of fierce and aggressive specimens of the mamba tribe, and of abnormal size, they held; and these there was no avoiding among the long grass and tangled undergrowth. Further, it was the especial haunt of the Inswelaboya—a species of hairless monster, half ghost, half human, given to strangling its victims on sight; and this was a more weighty consideration even than the fear of venomous reptiles.
This feeling on the part of the natives had its advantages, for the forest constituted part of one of the large tracts utilised as game preserves. Here koodoo were plentiful, with a sprinkling of the splendid sable antelope. Buffalo, too, haunted its gloomy depths, where the reed-fringed pools in the clearing afforded them a wallowing-place—and there was even a specimen or two of the rare white rhino. All these, of course, were rigidly protected, so far as it was possible to police so wild and difficult a tract of country at all. But the larger kind of game flourished. The natives, as we have said, shunned this gloomy wilderness, nor were the means of destruction at their disposal adequate. White men seldom came here, for permits were rarely given, and, failing such, the very act of getting the spoils away would have led to certain detection. But with Ben Halse the case was altogether different. He had exceptional advantages. He was resident on the spot, and knew every corner of those remote fastnesses. Then, too, he was hand in glove with the powerful chief of the district, and not a man of that chief’s following would have dreamed of giving him away.
Now he was making his way along a narrow game path. Verna walked immediately behind him—they had left their horses at a kraal on the high ground, for this stuffy, forest-covered valley bottom was not altogether devoid of the tsetse fly. Behind her again walked Undhlawafa, followed by several Zulus in single file.