Then his eyes fell on the children and he noiselessly slipped back under cover of a tree.
Hand in hand the boy and girl advanced to the water's edge, and kneeling, commenced to recite some strange incantation, which Van Hielen tried in vain to interpret. Sometimes their voices reached a high, plaintive key; sometimes they sank to a low murmur, strangely musical, and strangely suggestive of the babbling of brook water over stones and pebbles. When they had finished their incantation, they got up, and running to some bushes, returned in a few seconds with their arms full of flowers, which they threw with great dexterity on to the leaves of the giant lily. With their faces still turned to the water they remained standing, side by side, whilst a silence—deep and impressive, and shared, so it appeared to Van Hielen, by all nature—fell upon them.
A cold current of air, rising apparently from the pool, blew across the opening, and sweeping past Van Hielen, set all the leaves in motion. It rustled on till its echoes gradually ceased, and all was still again. It now seemed to Van Hielen that the character of everything around underwent a subtle change; and the feeling that every object around him was indulging in a hearty laugh at his expense intensified with every breath he drew. For the first time Van Hielen was afraid. He could not define the cause of his fear—but that only made his fear the more acute. He was frightened of the wind and darkness, and of something more than the wind and darkness—something concealed in—something cloaked by the wind and darkness. Even the atmosphere had altered—it, too, was making game of him. It distorted his vision. The things he saw around him were no longer stationary—they moved. They twirled and twisted themselves into all sorts of grotesque and fanciful attitudes; grew large, then small; nearer and then more distant. The plot of ground in front of which the children knelt played all manner of pranks—pranks Van Hielen did not at all like. It moved round and round—faster and faster, until it eventually became a whirlpool; which suddenly reversed and assumed the appearance of a pyramid revolving on its apex. Quicker and quicker it spun round—closer and closer it drew; until, without warning, it suddenly stopped and disappeared; whilst its place was taken by an oddly shaped bulge in the ground, which, swaying backward and forward, increased and increased in stature, till it attained the height of some seven or eight feet. Van Hielen could not compare this with anything he had ever seen. It was monstrous but shapeless—a mere mass of irregular lumps, a dull leadish white, and vibrating horribly in the moonlight. He thought of the children; but where they had stood he saw only two greenish-yellow spheres that, twirling round and round, suddenly approached him. As he started back to escape them, all was again changed. The lumpy figure had vanished, the atmosphere cleared, and everything was absolutely normal. There were now, however, solid grounds for fear. Advancing on him with flashing eyes and scintillating teeth were two vividly marked jaguars—a male and female. Van Hielen, usually calm and collected in the face of danger, on this occasion lost his presence of mind: his gun dropped from his hands, his knees quivered, and, helpless and inert, he reeled against the tree under which he had been standing. The jaguars—which seemed to be unusually savage even for jaguars—prepared to spring, and Van Hielen, certain his hour had come, was about to close his eyes and resign himself to his fate, when the female brute, although the bigger and more formidable, hesitated—thrust its dark, handsomely spotted head almost in its victim's face, and then, lashing its companion sharply with its tail, swerved aside and was off like a dart.
It took Van Hielen some minutes to realize his escape, and then, more in a dream than awake, he mechanically shouldered his rifle and slowly followed in the beasts' wake.
An hour's walking brought him to the end of the forest. The dawn was breaking, and the track leading to the settlement was just beginning to exhibit the mellowing influence of the first rays of the sun. There was an exhilarating freshness in the air that made Van Hielen keenly sensitive to the ambitious demands of a newly awakened stomach. Opposite him was the hut of the old woman, the entrance somewhat clumsily blocked with a makeshift door. As Van Hielen looked at it curiously, wondering if the woman was in the habit of barricading it in this fashion on account of her proximity to the forest, sounds greeted him from within.
Stepping lightly up to the hut, Van Hielen listened attentively. Some big animal—a hound most probably—was gnawing a bone—crunch, crunch, crunch!
Van Hielen moved away, but hadn't gone very far before an indefinable something made him turn back. That crunching, was it a dog or was it——? His heart turned sick within him at the bare thought. Again he listened at the threshold, and again he heard the sounds—gnaw, gnaw, gnaw—crunch, crunch, crunch! He rapped at first gently, and then loudly, ever so loudly.
The gnawing at once stopped, but no one answered him. Then he called—once, twice, thrice: there was no reply. Assured now there was something amiss, he gripped his rifle, and putting his shoulder to the door, burst it open. A flood of daylight rushed in, and he saw before him on the floor the mutilated and half-eaten remains of a woman, and—did his eyes deceive him or did he see?—crouching in a corner all ready to spring, two magnificent jaguars. Van Hielen raised his rifle, but—in less than a second—it fell from his grasp.
Towards him, from the same spot—their small mouths and slender hands smeared with blood—ran Yarakna and her brother.