He stood for a few moments panting after the struggle. Then, having recovered breath, he took a couple of steps forward and peered down into the narrow black rift. No sound came up. He found a stone, and dropped it in. A rattle or two against the rocky sides, and then silence. Only the thunder boom, now growing fainter, relieved it from time to time: but still the immensity of the white fiery cloud shed its lamp-like light, upon him and the scene of this silent tragedy. Then he made a careful search around. The weapon that had been flung at him he picked up, also the great knobstick, and dropped them over into the rift; and as he smoothed back the trampled grass into position as best he could, for the first time he spoke.
“Hlala gahle! A fighter’s weapons should be buried with him, and this is a right fitting tomb for such.”
Again he glanced around. The flat, table-like mountain top was silent once more. It was time to descend, and having thus decided, a new and louder thunder roll from a dark curtain swiftly moving up from another direction caused him no anxiety but rather the reverse. The witness of one tragedy had furnished material for another, and the storm now coming up would thoroughly and effectually eliminate any possible remaining trace of either.
Chapter One.
Of an Unwonted Peril.
The girl was drawing.
From where she sat a great mountain head, turreted with bronze-faced krantzes, rose up against the unclouded blue, set off by a V-shaped foreground of tossing, tumbling foliage—in a word, virgin forest. The grass was long in the little open space, and in and among the trailers hanging like network from the trees, birds were making the warm air merry with many a varied call and pipe. Now and then a grey monkey, reassured by the repose of the human occupant of the spot, would climb partly down, almost above her head, and hang, perking his black face in a knowing attitude, as though quite competent to criticise the water-colour sketch now rapidly taking shape: to skip aloft, chattering, as some sudden movement on the part of the artist appealed strongly to his instinct of self preservation. And then the dark shadowy depths of the surrounding trees would be alive with responsive mutterings and cackles, where the less venturesome of the troop lurked, awaiting further developments.
She, of such sights and sounds took no notice, for had she not been born and bred among them, and did they not constitute the ordinary surroundings of everyday life? Seated on a low flat rock, her colour box and water tin beside her, she worked on serenely in the warmth of the windless air, in nowise feeling the latter oppressive, for she was used to it.