Out of the centre of the vlei rose the clear-cut head of a lioness, with her eyes gleaming green as emeralds. She was lying there in the shallow water for coolness.
“She cannot see us,” said Hume; “the sun is shining in her eyes. See how they glow like bits of glass.”
They stood absorbed in the spectacle; but the lioness hearing, though she could not see, began to move her head, then sat up like a dog, with the water streaming from her yellow shoulders, and her eyes still sparkling with green fire. She thrust her head forward, then, detecting some taint in the air, gave a low growl, whereupon, from out the withered grass on the further side, rose a huge lion, who, being out of the direct rays of the sun, saw the silent group, and fetched a deep growl. Thereupon, the lioness walked towards him, and, after one long stare over her shoulder, she lay on the grass and rolled over like a big dog, and the lion crouched down with his shaggy head on his outstretched paws.
With many a backward glance, the party moved on, glad that they had seen such a spectacle without being compelled to fire in defence. They rested at noon for lunch, then pushed on steadily, gradually edging along to the higher watershed, away for miles within easy view. Presently there came to them a low, tremulous murmur, which grew as they advanced, until it sounded at last like the sweep of the outermost fringe of the waves swinging to and fro over loose shells.
“It is the voice of the reeds swayed by the wind,” said Hume; “and when we reach the ridge above we shall be above this leafy sea.”
“Oh, how beautiful!” murmured Laura, a few minutes later, as they looked over a vast sea of feathered green; now shining with a silver reflection as the sun struck upon the leaves all bent in one direction by the wind; now with a ripple of dark shadows as the light tops sprang back together; now mottled all over with specks and splashes of black and white, and yellow. And all the time there rose the sweet, soft murmur and sibilant swishing, low and melancholy. As far as the eye could see stretched this moving mass, and it widened out to a dense fringe of bush on the right, beyond which, again, rose the buttresses of the mountain, springing to where, in one straight mass of frowning granite, seamed and scarred into a thousand fissures, towered the precipitous sides of the mountain itself.
Resting on their weapons, they stood gazing from the restless level of green to the grim sentinel of rock, its brow among the clouds, and its front overlooking the lowlands; and as they looked it was borne in upon them by the melancholy in the voice of the reeds and by the impassive face of the mountain that there might well be some dark mystery of Nature hidden away in this desolate place, but there could be no hope, or joy, or sound of laughter. Here was Nature of vast unpeopled places, of voiceless rivers languishing through thirsty sands, of rock-strewn uplands, and arid flats—Nature gloomy, mournful, and yet majestic too.
They sat down and, while there was still light, studied once more the well-thumbed map, with its vague outlines, and no longer simple when compared with the tossed and broken zigzag of mountain kloof and gorge.
“It would seem easier,” said Webster, “to flank the mountain from the spot where we now stand, rather than attempt to scale its front in search of that profile of a face, whose likeness may have appeared plain to your uncle, but which very likely will offer to us no resemblance.”
“I think so also,” said Laura, “for, see, when we get round the mountain through the forest here marked, we enter apparently a wide valley where we should have no difficulty in finding the ruins said to exist, and the rock bears to the north-west, distant about ten miles.”