Taking one of the red faggots from the fire, he blew it into flame; then, rising, he went to the door of the hut wherein Nidia was asleep. Softly undoing the fastenings, he entered. The light flickered fitfully on the horrible trophies disposed around. The evil beast at his side was emitting a low, throaty growl; but neither that nor the proximity of this demon availed to awaken the sleeping girl. Calm, peaceful, she slumbered on amid her hideous surroundings. The wizard went forth again, “Ah, ah, Lupiswana! She knows not what is before her. To-morrow I think thou must have one taste of this white flesh—perhaps two.”
And the four-footed demon growled in response to the biped one.
Chapter Seventeen.
Of Peril and Fear.
Nidia’s sleep had been dreamless and profound, wherefore when she awoke the next morning she felt rested and refreshed. A shudder of repulsion ran: through her as her gaze made out the hideous adornments of her grisly sleeping apartment—the skulls and bones and stuffed snake-skins—but she felt no real fear. Even the human mask, looking sufficiently horrible in the semi-darkness of the hut, failed to inspire her with the wild panic terror which the wizard had confidently reckoned upon. Waking up amid such gruesome surroundings would, he calculated, produce such a shock upon her nerves as to render her frantic with terror, and this was one of the little refinements of cruelty he had promised himself. But she had gone through too much real peril, had looked on horrors too material to be scared by such mere bogeydom as a few skulls and bones.
She lay for a little while longer thinking out the position. Though naturally not a little anxious and a trifle uneasy, she was far from realising the desperate nature of her position, and that the very man she trusted in as protector and guide was an arch-rebel who had instigated and participated in more than one treacherous and wholesale murder. She supposed they had brought her here for the reason this man had given—for better security—and that to-day he would guide her safely to Sikumbutana.
To this end she rose. A snuffling noise outside the door of the hut attracted her attention, then a low growl. Some kraal cur, was all the thought she gave it. She opened the door and went outside. The sun was well up, and the birds were twittering in the thorn thicket, but of those who had brought her there she saw no sign. The ashes of the fire over which Shiminya had squatted lay white and dead, but of himself and the other there was no sign. But the animal she had heard was lying across the entrance of the kraal. She surveyed it with some curiosity. If this was a dog she had never seen one like it before. It was more like the pictures she had seen of a hyaena.
She went back into the hut to put on her straw hat, for the sun was hot. The fact of having the hat with her reminded her of the signal escape she herself had had from the massacre which had overwhelmed the Hollingworths. But that she had felt moved to take a stroll that afternoon she would have shared their fate. Then she upbraided herself. Was it not selfish to feel any sort of satisfaction under such circumstances? Ah, but—life was life, and death was ghastly and terrible—and she was alive.