It was time I decided to halt, Nkose. A puff of cold air coming upward warned me to pause in the act of making a step. The swirl and movement of the air lightened the thickness a little. And lo! I was standing on the very brink of a black chasm.
Its depth I could not estimate, but it looked bad. I was not unacquainted with these mountains, and I knew there were clefts which seemed to go down into the very heart of the world. But I saw something else. Away on the one hand rose a great rock, and around it, along the lip of the chasm, a narrow path seemed to run.
Now a new thought struck me. This might lead to one of the cave dwellings of those old tribes who long ages ago had inhabited those mountains. If so, no better hiding-place could I find, and immediately I started to make my way along the ledge path.
Whau, Nkose, I like not to recall that dread journey. That way, at first only broad enough for one man to travel, soon narrowed until a monkey could hardly have found foothold on it. Before me a great tongue of slippery rock face against which, and with arms extended, I had to flatten myself; behind, the unknown depths of that awful chasm. It seemed as though ghosts and witches sung in my ears in the dank breaths of the white mist, as though in the fitful puffs of the night wind hands were stretched forth to claw me down. Then, fortunately, the projecting rock tongue ended, and lo! I had gained a flat surface about twice the length of a man. This sloped inward, a narrowing tunnel, with a strange sudden twist just before it ended; and now my heart leaped within me, for no better hiding-place could I have lighted upon. Chilled, and wet, and weary, I crept into the narrowest end of the hole, and hardly had I lain me down than I fell into a deep, sound slumber.
When I awoke, it seemed that dawn had already begun to lighten the world, for I could make out the rock-walls of my sleeping place. Well, I would see, at any rate, what sort of hiding this place promised to afford. I crept to where the cave widened sufficiently to allow me to stand upright, and then, as I turned the corner, amazement was my portion, and a growl escaped me, which boded ill for him who had caused it, for I had run right against the body of a man.
He grappled with me in a moment, seizing my wrist before I could bury my assegai in his body, and speaking quickly and eagerly. We were perilously near the edge of the chasm, for in my advance I had borne him backward. Then, as suddenly, my grasp of him relaxed, and his of me; for, in the fast lightening dimness of dawn, I recognised the face of my faithful slave, Jambúla, the Xosa.