“They are safe, for they go and have the word of Umkomaas the chief; but we are here, and they would love us better if we were away.”
“But you have done them a service, and they would have made you chief.”
“I have done them a service, and when they were hot they would have set me above them; but some of them will think the service was too great for any reward but death. Water will run, and men will always act the same. See where the vultures circle; below them lays the field of the fight.”
The unclean birds, with their bald heads bent earthwards between the vast sweep of their fringed wings, were circling round above the stained and trampled ground, whereon were many scores of dark figures rigid in death, and each swift circle bringing them nearer to their dreadful repast.
“Phaugh! to think that a warrior should come at last to the maw of such a creature!”
They moved among the dead, lying as they fell, with gaping wounds on the naked breasts, and saw standing alone a large rock rising from a bed of flat stone stained red with blood.
“See the stone of blood!” said Sirayo. “It was here they made their last stand.”
The Golden Rock! Hume looked at it with a feeling of horror and disgust, as though it were itself answerable for that ominous tinge of red; then his eye was caught by a singular life-like appearance, and advancing, he saw that the rock had been carved into the semblance of a coiled serpent, with the head slightly raised and projecting, giving to it a touch of defiance.
Looking closer, he saw that the coils were beautifully carved, the muscles standing out with startling distinctness, while each scale was clearly defined, and the whole polished to the smoothness of marble. The head stood about five feet from the ground, and the tail ran out in a small ridge across the flat rock at the back. Under the throat a broad vein of white quartz gave a wonderful touch of reality to the carving, and along the side of the coils were patches of yellow and black, while the topmost coils in line with the head were richly marked with yellow. From the broad blunt nose there was a continuous line of yellow over the head and along the backbone of the topmost coil.
“It is gold,” said Hume hoarsely—“pure gold—and if these veins and splashes run through the mass there must be thousands of ounces.”