A ghastly fear was upon him. The horror and mystery of the thing got upon even his iron nerves—the suddenness of it too, just when he had lulled himself into a complete sense of security. Had he learned in like fashion that he was to be slain in an ordinary way at a given time it would not have shaken him beyond the ordinary. But this thing—there was something so devilish about it. What did it mean? Was it some grotesque idol worked by mechanism, even as in the old pagan temples—to which human sacrifices were offered? Or—for he could not candidly discredit all the weird and marvellous tales and traditions of some of these up-country tribes, degraded and man-eating as they were—was it some unknown and terrifying monster inhabiting the dens and caves of the earth? Whatever it was, he knew too well, of course, that the coincidence which had so miraculously resulted in the sparing of his life at the hands of the victorious Ba-gcatya, reeking with slaughter, would stand him in nowhere here. He remembered the mystery hanging over the fate of Lutali, and those horrible beings who had hauled the Arab to his doom, whatever it was, who indeed might well constitute the priesthood of the unknown devil-god.
Surely never indeed had earth presented a fairer scene than this upon which the adventurer's eyes rested, as he made his way down the mountain-side. The calm, peaceful beauty of the day, the golden sunlight flooding the plain beneath, the great circle of Imvungayo, and the—by contrast—tiny circles of lesser kraals scattered about the valley or crowning some mountain spur, and, mellow upon the stillness, the distant low of cattle—the singing of women at work mingling with the soft voices of a multitude of doves in cornlands and the surrounding forest-trees. Yet now in the white peaks towering to the cloudless heavens, in the black and craggy rifts, in the wide, rolling, partially-wooded plains—the hunter's paradise—this man saw only a gloomy wizard circle, inclosing some horrible inferno, the throne of the frightful demon-god of this extraordinary race.
Then it occurred to Laurence that he had better not let this thing get too much upon his nerves. It was the result of inaction, he told himself. Several months of rest and tranquillity had begun to turn him soft. That would not do. He had got to look matters in the face fairly and squarely. The ceremony which was to bring him to what would almost certainly be a fearful fate was set for the fall of the second moon, the talkers had said—but of this he had been already aware, for the chief Nondwana and his son were both well known to him. That would give him a little over six weeks. Escape? Nothing short of a miracle could effect that, he told himself, remembering the immense tract of desolate country surrounding the fastnesses of the Ba-gcatya, and the ferocious cannibal hordes which lay beyond these, and who indeed would wreak a vengeance of the most barbarous kind upon their old enemy and scourge, the slaver-chief, did they find him alone, and to that extent no longer formidable, in their midst.
The friendship of the king? No. That was based on superstition, even as the friendship of the entire nation. Even it was assumed for an end. Again, should he boldly challenge the pretensions of the demon-god, whatever it might be, and asserting himself to be the real one, offer to slay the horror in open conflict? Not a moment's reflection was needed, however, to convince him of the utter impracticability of this scheme. The cherished superstition of a great nation was not to be uprooted in any such rough-and-ready fashion. The only way of escape left open to him was that of death—death swift and sudden—the death of the suicide—to escape the greater horror. But from this he shrank. The grim hardness of his recent training had nerved him rather to face peril than to avoid it. He did not care to contemplate such a way out of the dilemma. He was cornered. There was no way of escape.
And then, as he walked thus, thinking, and thinking hard, in the fierce, desperate, clearheadedness of a strong, cool-nerved man face to face with despair, a voice—a female voice, lifted in song—sounded across his path, nearer and nearer. And now a wave of hope, of relief, surged through Laurence Stanninghame's heart, for there flooded in upon him, as with an inspiration, a way out of the situation. For he knew both the voice and the singer, and at that moment a turn in the bushes brought the latter and himself face to face.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] A term of deference frequently used in addressing one of the royal family.