Compton looked up with shilling eyes. "The very place I am in," he muttered.
"For many months it was my home—if I may so misuse a word so charged with bitterness to me. Not a day passed but my thoughts went in sickness of spirit to my home, to my wife and little one; and it was when I was thinking of them that I thought I heard them calling my name from the cave. A sick man's fancy! But there had been a sound, and on entering to the far end of the cavern, I heard it repeated—a faint droning, such as would be produced by a shell held to the ear. There was, too, a current of air, and, feeling in the darkness, I found the crack through which it emerged. With a spear- head I easily broke the rock away, for it was a mere envelope. Thrusting the spear in, I felt there was an opening beyond. When I had satisfied myself that the passage extended for some distance, my first precaution was to find a slab of rock to fit the opening I had made."
Compton laid down the book, looked out to see that no one was near, and crept to the far end of the cave. Pressing with his hand, he soon found the rock yield. Satisfied, he returned to the journal with renewed eagerness.
"My first careful examination of the passage disclosed the welcome fact that it extended a great distance in a westerly direction, but without lights I saw it would be dangerous to attempt a thorough investigation. Accordingly, I occupied myself for several days in making a supply of candles, using the barrels of my gun as a mould, and mixing beeswax with oil clarified from the fat of animals, such as monkeys and coneys. Provided with two such candles, I began my explorations underground, and after many failures discovered a way of escape, which others may benefit by. The passage, in an uninterrupted course, dips under the gorge and enters the south-west cliff, which is completely honeycombed. After dipping under the gorge, it branches in several directions, but care must be taken to follow the extreme right-hand passage. This follows the outer shell, skirts what I have called the Hall of Winds, dips down through a long tunnel, and emerges on the outer slope at a point near the spot where the river disappears. The passage is safe, but can only be taken provided a candle or torch is used. If these directions should come under the notice of some unhappy traveller, let him accept my earnest wishes for success in his efforts to escape from a place which to me was first a haven of rest and then a hateful prison, and there is a feeling I have that I have not written this in vain."
The son of the lonely Englishman who had written the foregoing in sadness of spirit, but in hope for others, sat long staring before him with a lump in his throat.
"Not in vain, my father—not in vain did you labour," he murmured. Again he read over the directions, then very carefully he packed the journal and strapped it on his back, to be with him wherever he went. Noticing how the time had passed while he had been receiving the message from the dead, he hurried to the gorge to see if there were any signs of his friends, and his eyes went to the dark walls, and to the silent pool far below, with a feeling of intense repugnance at the thought of the ghoulish women who lurked unseen, but seeing all.
"Have you seen Ngonyama?"
"The smoke ascends no longer, Inkose; but we have seen the signal answered."
"How so?"
"Another smoke arose yet further off, and yet another, and beyond that another, till the word of the fire-makers was passed back even to the wide waters."