"Nyonyoba!"
Clear, distinct, the name sounded, floating down from above.
"What the devil is that?" was the characteristic exclamation that burst from Laurence—and there was something of a quaver in the tone. For his nerves were quite overstrung, and no manifestation of things unknown would have surprised him now.
"Nyonyoba! Ho, Nyonyoba!" again called the voice in soft, rich Zulu tones, low but penetrating. "Move now some thirty paces to where the cliff juts. There is that by which you may return to earth again—and the Spider may go hungry."
"The Spider has got enough to fill him up for some long time," answered Laurence, with excusable pride. "But who speaks?—The voice is like that of Lindela."
"It is that of Lindela," came the soft-toned reply. "Climb now, and tarry not. I see the Spider. Climb before it is too late."
With all his elation, now that the first flush of victory was over, Laurence could not recall without a shiver the grasp of those horrible tentacles, the fiend-like glare of that dreadful face. He vastly preferred flight to renewed fight, now.
Following the voice, he came to the point indicated. A rope of twisted raw-hide thong lay against the rock. His heart leaped within him. Soon he would be free from this fearful place. The cliff here formed a projecting angle, all jagged like the teeth of a saw. He remembered noticing this, remembered balancing its capabilities of forming a natural ladder. He had even climbed a few steps, and then had been forced to own that it was impracticable. Now, however, with the aid of the raw-hide rope, the thing could be done—done with comparative ease.
As a preliminary he stepped back, and, gazing upwards, went over the climb in his mind, carefully noting every step, every handhold. The cliff was terrace here, and the nearest resting-place, whence, indeed, the rope hung, he estimated to be about sixty feet. Without this aid, however, it might as well have been sixty hundred.