“Hush,” whispered Webster.
They listened, and heard a sharp exclamation outside. Those who stood near the wall peeped through the crack, and saw a Zulu standing in the centre of the vacated chamber, looking around him curiously at the signs of the struggle.
There was a fierce hiss, and the Zulu, with a cry of alarm, darted off, while the old woman opened wide her mouth in a silent laugh, and cracked her fingers. She it was who had made this noise.
They heard a noise of men leaping to the ground, and a distant shouting, gradually sinking to a confused murmur.
“They have gone,” said Sirayo. “Old mother, have you any food?”
The old dame responded not very amiably, but at an authoritative order from her own chief she disappeared through a narrow opening, hitherto—hidden in the gloom, into another apartment, while, at the prospect of food, the men brightened up. A man may soon become indifferent to danger, but peril never deadens the edge of hunger, so that many a man condemned to death has breakfasted heartily a few minutes before the hour set for his execution. The fare laid before them was not tempting, but they ate the food ravenously and felt the better for it. Laura retired into the other compartment, after somewhat timidly eyeing the old woman, and the strange crone followed her, mumbling and smiling, as well as her toothless gums would permit, at this new type of feminine beauty. The natives prepared to sleep, that appearing to them the most natural alternative, but the developed nerves of the civilised white rebelled against such indulgence at such a time. Hume leant against the wall with his arms folded, putting a few whispered questions to Webster, who restlessly moved up and down, as though pacing the bridge.
“I want to get out of this place,” he growled. “It isn’t natural—it’s cramped, dark, uncanny, with the dried skin of a snake on the wall, and in its evil-smelling corners the lurking superstition of a mysterious and bloody past. If we stay here we’ll deserve the worst kind of ill-luck.”
“How large are these ruins?” asked Hume.
“About fifty yards across, but with a multitude of passages coiling round the centre chamber, from which we escaped into this hole, which, I take it, lies between the first curve of the passage and the inner chamber.”
“Then, if the Zulus, knowing we are concealed somewhere in the pile, made a systematic search, they must find us?”