Something cold had come in contact with his hand. He started violently. But it was only the clammy surface of a projecting rock.
And now the whole of the gloomy chamber resounded with shrill and angry hissing, as the disturbed reptiles glided hither and thither—was alive with waving necks and distended jaws, glimpsed shadowy on the confines of the disk of light which shot into the remote corners of the frightful den. Curiously enough, not one of the serpents seemed to be lying in the pathway itself. All were on the ledges of rock which bordered it.
“Keep silence and follow close on my steps,” said Josane shortly. Then he raised his voice and threw a marvellously strange, soft melodiousness into the weird song, which he had never ceased to chant. Eustace, who was the first to recover to some extent his self-possession, and who took in the state of affairs, now joined in with a low, clear, whistling accompaniment. The effect was extraordinary. The writhing contortions of the reptiles ceased with a suddenness little short of magical. With heads raised and a slight waving motion of the neck they listened, apparently entranced. It was a wonderful sight, terrible in its weird ghastliness—that swarm of deadly serpents held thus spell-bound by the eerie barbaric music. It really looked as though there was more than met the eye in that heathenish adjuration as they walked unharmed through the deadly reptiles to the refrain of the long-drawn, lugubrious chant.
“Harm us not,
O Snake of Snakes!
Do us no hurt,
O Inyoka ’Nkúlu!”
Thus they passed through that fearful chamber, sometimes within a couple
of yards of two or three serpents lying on a level with their faces.
Once it was all that even Eustace, the self-possessed, could do to keep
himself from ducking violently as the head of a huge puff-adder
noiselessly shot up horribly close to his ear, and a very marked quaver
came into his whistling notes.
As the cavern narrowed to its former tunnel-like dimensions the serpents
grew perceptibly scarcer. One or two would be seen to wriggle away, here
and there; then no more were met with. The sickening closeness of the
air still continued, and now this stood amply accounted for. It was due
to the foetid exhalations produced by this mass of noisome reptiles
congregated within a confined space far removed from the outer air.
“Faugh!” ejaculated Hoste. “Thank Heaven these awful brutes seem to have
grown scarce again. Shall we have to go back through them, Josane?”
“It is not yet time to talk of going back,” was the grim reply. Then he
had hardly resumed his magic song before he broke it off abruptly. At
the same time the others started, and their faces blanched in the
semi-darkness.
For, out of the black gloom in front of them, not very far in front
either, there burst forth such a frightful diabolical howl as ever
curdled the heart’s blood of an appalled listener.
Chapter Forty Five.
A Fearful Discovery.
They stood there, turned to stone. They stood there, strong men as they were, their flesh creeping with horror. The awful sound was succeeded by a moment of silence, then it burst forth again and again, the grim subterraneous walls echoing back its horrible import in ear-splitting reverberation. It sounded hardly human in its mingled intonation of frenzied ferocity and blind despair. It might have been the shriek of a lost soul, struggling in the grasp of fiends on the brink of the nethermost pit.
“Advance now, cautiously, amakosi,” said Josane. “Look where you are stepping or you may fall far. Keep your candles ready to light. The Home of the Serpents is a horrible place. There is no end to its terrors. Be prepared to tread carefully.”
His warning was by no means superfluous. The ground ended abruptly across their path. Suddenly, shooting up, as it were, beneath their very feet, pealed forth again that frightful, blood-curdling yell.