He crawled along the ledge. Here at any rate nothing could disturb his last hours. The cool night wind fanned his brow—the single strip of radiant stars seemed to dance in one dazzling ocean of light. His stupefaction reasserted itself. He sank down in dead unconsciousness. Was it slumber or death?
It was not death. Renshaw awoke at last; awoke to consciousness in a strange half-light. Above was a roof of overhanging rock—underneath him, too, was the same hard rock. A strip of sky, now a pale blue, was all he could see.
Raising himself upon his elbow, he looked forth. The sun was setting in a blood-red curtain of cloud beyond the distant mountain peaks, shedding a fiery glow upon the stupendous chain of iron cliffs which overhung the weird and desolate defile. It came home to Renshaw then, that he must have slept for nearly twenty-four hours.
He still felt terribly weak, and his dazed and dizzy brain was still beclouded as in a fog. The events of yesterday, of his lifetime, in fact, seemed but as a far-away and uncertain dream. At any rate he could die in peace here—in peace with all mankind. He felt no fear of death, he had faced it too often. The utter loneliness of his last hours seemed to hold no terrors for him either, and he even found himself drowsily thinking that such surroundings—the grim, beetling cliffs, the wild and rugged peaks, the utter desolation of this remote untrodden solitude—were meet witnesses to the last hours of one who had spent the bulk of his life in their midst. His mind went back to the present undertaking and its disastrous results—to the “Valley of the Eye,” to Sellon’s selfish treachery—and his own self-sacrifice. But for that same act of treachery, tardily repented of as it was, they would both have got out safe, for it was during the time thus lost that the horde of Bushmen and Korannas had stolen up to surprise them. Ah, well, what did it matter now? What did anything matter? The treasure—the precious stones which he had thrown into the balance against his own life—what did they count now? He had enough of them about him at that moment to place him in affluent circumstances, had it been willed that he should live. Yet of what account were they now? Mere dross.
Then there arose before him a vision of Sunningdale—the cool, leafy garden, the spreuws piping among the fig trees, the plashing murmur of the river, and Violet Avory, as he had last seen her—no not then so much as at the moment when she had extracted that promise. Well, he had kept his promise, at any rate. And then Violet’s image faded, and, strange to say, the face which bent over his rocky couch, even the hard bed of death, was not hers, but that of Marian—sweet, pitying, soothing. And then the poor, clouded brain grew dim again—dim and restful.
But there are times when a subtle instinct of peril will penetrate even a drugged understanding. Uneasily Renshaw raised himself on his elbow, and again looked forth. The sun had disappeared now; a red afterglow still lingered on the loftier peaks, but the abrupt scarps of the great mountains were assuming a purpler gloom. Looking up, he noted that the overhanging rock projected beyond the slope of the ledge, forming a kind of roof. Looking downward along the ledge he saw—
A huge leopard crouching flat upon its belly, its long tail gently waving, its green scintillating eyes fixed upon him. As they met his, a low rumbling purr issued from the beast’s throat, and with a stealthy, almost imperceptible glide, it crawled a little nearer.
With consummate presence of mind, he followed its example. Without changing his position he felt cautiously for his gun. Fool that he was! He had left it behind—surely at the spot where he had sunk down in his stupor. Then he felt for his revolver; but that too, he had somehow contrived to lose. He was unarmed.
The beast was barely twenty yards distant. The low, rumbling purr increased in volume. As he kept his eyes fixed on those of the huge cat, Renshaw felt a strange eerie fascination creeping over him. The thing was not real. It was a nightmare—an illusion come to haunt his last hours. He would break the spell.
Again he looked forth. The loom of the towering peaks was blacker now against the silvery sky—the grey shadows deeper within the desolate kloofs. He noted too that he was at an elevation of nearly thirty feet from the ground. In his weakened state there was no escape that way.