“Let me see.” She drew her wraps about her, and was about to descend, when, with a shudder and a nervous laugh, she crept back, dismayed by the darkness.
The three men now walked round the enclosure, fired a couple of chance shots, restarted the fires, and returned to their posts. The uproar had subsided, and was succeeded by another spell of oppressive silence, broken at lessening intervals by a vague sound, which grew in volume, but not in distinctness, and before which the other sounds did not revive. As it grew louder it took on a rhythmical beat not unpleasant.
“It sounds like a human voice,” said Webster.
“Yes, it is a black man chanting, eh, Klaas?”
“Eweh, inkose, he sings as he walks;” and so speaking, the Kaffir stretched himself by the fire and drew his blanket over his head.
“He evidently fears no danger,” remarked Webster.
“I don’t know,” said Hume, and stirred the Gaika; “what manner of man can this be who walks abroad in the night, making sign of his presence to the lions?”
“It is the wizard,” replied the Gaika solemnly, “and it is not well to look on him. Even the beasts quit his path;” and once again he pulled the blanket over his head.
The man approached rapidly, and now the deep chest notes rolling forth in a rough melody took shape from the mighty volume of sound, and now he was at the fence; and now, with a cry of “Layate,” he leaped the thorns—a wonderful bound—and still chanting, he came up to the waggon, paused a moment at the body of the lion, then stepped to the fire, and stood there with the glow upon his tall form and in his smouldering eyes. A black man he was, of gigantic mould, with a tiger skin knotted by the fore-paws round his neck, and with a mass of bone necklets that clattered at every movement. On his forehead was a large ball of hair, behind which rose two eagle’s feathers, and he carried a bundle of sticks and assegais, while from his shoulder hung a large skin bag.
“Who are you, and what is your business?” asked Hume, after looking intently at the stranger.