Away among the masses of the wonderful Matopo range.
Huge granite piles rearing up skyward in every varied form of bizarre delineation, like the mighty waves of an angry sea suddenly petrified, the great flow of fallen stones covering the entire slope like the inflow of surf upon a slanting shore; the scanty trees, and tall, knife-edged tambuti grass in the valley bottoms, like seaweed in the rainy moisture of the dusking evening. Then a blue gleam of lightning along the grim granite faces; and a dull boom, re-echoed again and again as the thunder-peal is tossed from crag to crag in a hundred deep-toned reverberations.
Standing just within their ample shelter—which is formed by the overhang of a great boulder—Blachland gazes forth upon the weird and awe-inspiring solitude. Opposite, a huge castellated rock, many hundreds of feet in height, balances on its summit a mighty slab, which it seems would need but the touch of a finger to send crashing into the valley beneath; then a ridge of tumbled boulders; further down another titanic pile, reft clean through the centre by a chasm, in whose jaws is gripped tight the enormous wedge of stone which seems to have split it: and so on, till the eye is tired and the mind overawed by the stupendous grimness of these Dante-esque heights and valleys.
The adventure is in full swing now. Blachland and his strange guide have been out several days, travelling when possible only at night, and then keeping to the hills as much as practicable. And now they are nearing their goal.
And, looking at it calmly, it is a strange adventure indeed, almost an aimless one. The story of the buried gold Blachland is inclined to scout utterly. But no amount of questioning will shake the faith of his guide, and so, at last, he has come to believe in it himself. Indeed, otherwise, what motive would Hlangulu have for aiding and abetting that which, in his eyes, was nothing more nor less than a monstrous piece of sacrilege? He knew that savages are the most practical of mortals, and that it is entirely outside their code of ethics to go to a vast deal of trouble and risk without the prospect of adequate and substantial advantage to be gained thereby.
It had occurred to him that there might be another motive, and a sinister one. Hlangulu might be decoying him into the most out-of-the-way recesses of Matabeleland in order to make away with him treacherously; and the idea was not a pleasant one, in that, however on the alert he might be, there must always be times when a crafty and determined foe could strike him down when off his guard. But here, again, motive counted for something, and here, again, motive utterly failed, as we have said. He could not call to mind that Hlangulu had the faintest occasion to owe him any sort of a grudge, and, even if it were so, he would not go to work in any such roundabout fashion to pay it. There was nothing for it but to set the whole thing down to its real motive, cupidity to wit.
To this had succeeded another idea. What if this concealed gold were really there, and be succeeded in obtaining it? It was then that he would have to watch his guide and companion with a jealous eye. For the whole is greater than the half, and would this covetous savage remain content with the half? He resolved to keep his eyes very wide open indeed, during the return journey.
The return journey! It was rather early to think about that, for the perils of the enterprise were only about to begin. Turning back within their shelter now, he proceeded to question Hlangulu, who was squatting against a rock, smoking a pipe—to question him once more as to the surroundings of the King’s grave.
But the man’s answers were mere reiterations of all that he had said before. They would soon be within touch of the guards whom, in the ordinary way, it would be impossible to pass. The snake? Yes, there was no doubt but that it was the itongo, or ghost of the Great Great One who sat there. Many had seen it. He, Hlangulu, had seen it twice, and had retreated, covering his face, and calling out the sibonga of the dead King. It was an immense black mamba, and had been seen to go in and out of the grave. It was as long and again half as long as Isipau himself, he declared, looking Blachland up and down.
The latter, remembering Sybrandt’s narrative, concluded that there was something decidedly creepy in bearding a particularly vicious and deadly species of serpent within a narrow cleft of rock, the beast being about nine feet long at that—which is what Hlangulu’s estimate would make it. Under any circumstances it would be bad enough, but now with all the grim and eerie adjuncts thrown in, why the whole scheme seemed to bristle with peril. And what was there to gain by it? Well, the gold.