A cold nose touched his cheek. The contact acted like a charm. He sat bolt upright and struck out violently. A soft furry coat gave way before his fist—there was a yelp, a snarl of terror, and a sound of pattering feet scurrying away into deeper darkness, but—only to return again.
As though the shock had revived him, Renshaw’s brain began to recover its dormant faculties. It awoke to the horror, the peril of the position. And with that awakening came back something of the old adventurous, dauntless resolution. He remembered that violent exercise—to keep the patient walking—was among the specifics in cases of venomous snake-bite, which in conjunction with other antidotes he had more than once seen employed with signal success. But in his own case the other antidotes were wanting.
Still the old dogged determination—the strength of a trained will—prevailed. He would make the effort, even if it were to gain some inaccessible ledge or crevice where he might die in peace. Even in the midst of his numbed and torpid stupor the loathing horror wherewith he had encountered the touch of the wild creature’s muzzle acted like a whip. To be devoured by those brutes like a diseased sheep—faugh!
Gaining his feet with an effort, he unscrewed the stopper of his flask and drank off the contents. With the poison working in his system the fiery spirit was as water to him. But its effect was invigorating, and setting his face toward the cliffs he staggered forth into the darkness.
Before the once more erect figure of their dread enemy, Man, the skulking jackals and hyenas slunk back in dismay. But only into the background. Stealthily, warily they watched his progress, following afar softly and noiselessly upon his footsteps. For their keen instinct satisfied them that this stricken representative of the dominant species would never leave their grisly rock-girt haunt alive. It was only a question of patience.
The instinct, too, of the latter led him on. His stupefied brain still realised two things. Under the shelter of the crags he would be in safer hiding from human enemies, and that haply a ledge among the same would afford him a secure refuge from the loathsome beasts now shadowing him, and ready to pounce upon him when he should be too weak to offer any resistance.
On—on, he pressed—ever upward. Steeper and steeper became the way. Suddenly he stopped short. Before him was a wall of rock.
He peered searchingly upward in the darkness. A cleft slanted obliquely up the cliffs face. His knowledge of the mountains and their formation told him that here might be the very thing he sought. His instinct still guiding him, he began to scale the cleft. He found it an easy matter. There were plenty of rough projections, affording hand and foot hold. The ghoul-like scavengers of the desert could not follow him here.
Under ordinary circumstances the climb would have been a difficult one, especially at night. But now, as in the case of the somnambulist, matter triumphed over mind. The mind being dormant and the centre of gravity undisturbed by mental misgivings, however unconscious, he ascended safely.
The climb came to an end. Here was the very thing. A ledge, at first barely four feet broad, and then widening out as it ran round the face of the cliff—and sloping—not outward as ordinarily, but inward. What he did not see in his now returning torpor, was a black, narrow cave running upward in continuation of the cleft by which he had ascended.