“Now the night drew on, and there was a rush of stars out into the blackness of the heavens, and I dared not move because of the holes and pitfalls which lay around. So I crouched down beneath the rock beside which I had first met Gungana, and shivered; for it was cold high up on that mountain-top, and my light war-adornments were of no use against the cold. Moreover, I was very hungry, having eaten nothing since before the attack—that is to say, before daybreak. Then a soft wind sprang up and wailed mournfully in the long grasses, and again I shivered, but not only with cold, for it seemed to me that the whole of that wild mountain-top was haunted—was peopled with the ghosts of those who had been slain that day, crying and whispering around me in the darkness; and ever and again I would hear the crunch of the stone upon Gungana’s shaven skull, till I would fain stop my ears to shut out the sound; but that was of no use, because the sound was in my brain. And it seemed that Gungana’s ghost had come up out of the earth, and was standing over me with hollow and blazing eyes, till at last I could bear it no longer, and rose up, resolved to get away from that spot, at any rate. So I walked on cautiously, and singing softly to myself to drive away these evil shapes of the darkness, and, wearied as I was, I preferred movement, for it warmed me.
“But towards morning a thick mist sprang up, and now I knew no longer what direction I was taking. I snuffed the wind, but it was coming in fitful puffs equally from every direction. Fearing to walk over the cliff, I returned to retrace my steps, and then— Au! that is a moment I can never forget, even now, old as I am. The ground failed beneath me, and I shot downwards feet foremost into the earth. For one sickening moment thus I fell, then stopped with a jerk. The stick of my shield, my hold of which I had not relaxed, had wedged somehow crosswise and arrested my fall; and there I hung suspended in this black chasm, even as Gungana had hung suspended.
“But the straight drop seemed to end here, for I could now feel the rock with my feet sloping obliquely down. However, it was all the same, for I could not climb up; I had fallen too far and the sides were too straight for that. Whau! Gungana had spoken truly when he had predicted for me a worse death than his. For no merciful hand was there to crush in my skull with a stone from above, and so end my sufferings at once. No! I was destined to hours of horror down in my living tomb, holding on by a most frail support, to leave go when exhaustion should overpower me, and sink, buried alive, into the awful heart of the earth. Did ever living man feel as I felt, Nkose, as I clung there, realising that never again was I to behold the light of day? Surely not.
“And then a most unutterably fearsome thing happened. Strange, uncouth whisperings seemed to sound beneath, rising upward from the blackness of the pit. Then something grabbed me by the leg in a firm and bony grip. The stick of the shield gave way, and, with a last awful cry of wild terror and despair, I felt myself being dragged down—down!”
Chapter Eleven.
The Eaters of Men.
“In that short flash of time I must have died a thousand deaths. In my terror I made no attempt to arrest my downward course. Stones and dust rattled past my ears, flashes, as of sparks, in front of my brain; then I stopped.
“At first I hardly dared open my eyes, but, feeling the grip on my leg relax, I looked beneath, shuddering, fearful as to what my glance might rest upon—I who had boasted that I knew not fear.