“Fool that you are, that think yourself so wise! To leave this place with me! With me, skilled in all labors of metal and stone, strong to cut passage-ways--”
“You devil! You hewed a way into my house?”
H'yemba laughed brutally.
“Silently, steadily, I labored!” he boasted. “And behold the reward! Power for me; eternal slavery for you and all your blood--if any live!”
Insane with rage and hate, Allan nevertheless realized that now all depended on keeping his thought and nerve.
One single premature move and his son would inevitably be hurled over the parapet, down two hundred and fifty feet to the river-bed below. At all hazards, he must keep cool!
The smith, after all only a barbarian and of limited intelligence, had not even thought of the obvious command to make Stern drop his pistol on the floor.
Upon this oversight now hung all Allan's hopes.
Even though the man's retainers might rush the cave and slaughter all, yet in Allan's heart burned a clear and steady flame of hot desire to compass H'yemba's death.
And as the smith now loudly boasted, insulted, vilified, in the true manner of the savage, imperceptibly, inch by inch, Allan was turning his pistol-barrel upward.