This was unanswerable. Laurence stood for a few moments gazing down into the fearsome place which held this shuddering mystery. Was it real? Was he dreaming? Were those hours of terror and despair spent down there but some gigantic nightmare? He passed his hand over his eyes—then looked again. The thing was real. But now he could no longer see the horrid shape—black and grisly. The creature must have withdrawn into its ghastly den—to die. The wounds which he had inflicted upon it were surely too deep, too strongly dealt, to be aught but mortal. The Spider would no more drink the blood—feed on the flesh of men. Then he turned to follow Lindela.
The latter had already loaded herself with the bundle of wraps and provisions. To his suggestion that they should, at any rate, halve the load, Lindela laughed in scorn.
"A man's work is to carry his weapons, and, when needed, use them," she answered. "To bear loads—and this is a light one indeed—is woman's work—not work for one who has proved too great even for the Spider."
Then, as they travelled down the mountain side in the fresh cool night air, she told him of all that had befallen since he had been hauled to his mysterious and awful doom. The thoughtless act of Holmes had necessitated the destruction of Nondwana's kraal there and then; and, indeed, the king's brother was more than dissatisfied with the clemency extended to the other two white men. But the word of Tyisandhlu, once given, stood. They had been sent out of the country under a strong armed escort, which was under orders to conduct them to the great town of an Arab chief, with whom El Khanac had blood brotherhood.
How had she found out the mystery of the Spider? Was it known to all the nation? It was known to very few, she explained. The Black ones who waited upon the Spider were a mysterious order—so mysterious, indeed, that none knew exactly who were members of it and who were not. Nor could she tell how the strange and gruesome cult first originated, save that it was dimly whispered that the Ba-gcatya had taken it over from the nation they had driven out, and that in accordance with an ancient prophecy uttered by a famous magician at the time of their flight from Zululand. But as she told of her resolve to rescue him at all risks, even so long ago as when, by overhearing her father's talk, she learned that this doom was to be his in any case, Laurence felt himself grow strangely soft towards her. Savage or not, Nondwana's daughter was a splendid character in the whole-hearted devotion of her love; heroic was hardly the word for it. And as she went on to tell how she had devoted herself entirely to finding out the locality of the dreaded spot, learning the way to it by stealthily following on the footsteps of that grim order when it was actually engaged in conveying thither another human victim, risking her life at every step,—and not her life merely, but incurring the certainty of the same fearful doom in the event of discovery,—telling it, too, in the most simple way, and as though the act were the most natural thing in the world, Laurence realized that he might have done worse than throw in his lot with this loftily descended daughter of a splendid race of kingly barbarians, had circumstances been ordered otherwise.
But even while thus listening, while thus thinking, another vein of thought was running parallel in his mind. Those insignificant-looking stones, which he had picked up down there, represented wealth—ample wealth; and with it had come a feverish longing to enjoy the comforts, the pleasures, the delights which civilization afforded to those who possessed it. Yet, his entering upon such enjoyment, if it were ever effected,—as at that moment it seemed in a fair way to be,—he owed to Lindela. What was to become of her, for she could never return to her nation? She had thrown away everything, this high-born daughter of a race of kings; had risked her life daily, to save the life of a stranger—and that for love. Yes, that was love indeed! he thought. She was a brown-skinned savage, but she was a splendid woman—with mind and character as noble as her own magnificent physique. She would be a delightful, a perfect companion during those wild, free forest marches—day after day, night after night, fraught with peril and hardship at every step, but—how would civilization affect her? Would it not ruin that grand character, even as it had ruined really noble natures before her,—for there is such a thing as the "noble savage," although we grant the product to be a scarce one. And with all this was entwined the thought of Lilith Ormskirk.
Well, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, had always been his guiding maxim, and for the present, as he took his way down the mountain side—the great crags rising higher and higher to the moon, the black billowy roll of the forest country drawing nearer and nearer, the voices of the wild creatures of the waste, raised weird and ravening on the night, the thunderous boom of the voice of the forest king ever and anon dominating all others—Laurence felt conscious of a wild, exhilarating sense of freedom. There was music in these sounds after the ghastly, awed silence of the horrible place from which he had been delivered. And, was it due on his part to the frame of mind of the hardened adventurer, trained to take things as they come, the good with the ill—but never, during the days and weeks that followed, did the daughter of the line of the Ba-gcatya kings feel moved to any qualm of regret over the sacrifice of name and home and country which she had made for this man's sake.