The sight of this snake-haunted cave was too much for even Benee's nerves, and he sprang up and speedily dashed, all intact, into the open air.
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Notwithstanding his extraordinary adventure in the cave of serpents, the wandering Indian felt in fine form that day.
The air was now much cooler after the storm, all the more so, no doubt, that Benee was now travelling on a high table-land which stretched southwards and west in one long, dreary expanse till bounded on the horizon by ridges of lofty serrated mountains, in the hollow of which, high in air, patches of snow rested, and probably had so rested for millions of years.
The sky was very bright. The trees at this elevation, as well as the fruit, the flowers, and stunted shrubs, were just such as one finds at the Cape of Good Hope and other semi-tropical regions. The ground on which he walked or trotted along was a mass of beauty and perfume, rich pink or crimson heaths, heather and geraniums everywhere, with patches of pine-wood having little or no undergrowth. Many rare and beautiful birds lilted and sang their songs of love on every side, strange larks were high in air, some lighting every now and then on the ground, the music of their voices drawn out as they glided downwards into one long and beautiful cadence.
There seemed to be a sadness in these last notes, as if the birds would fain have warbled for ever and for aye at heaven's high gate, though duty drew them back to this dull earth of ours.
But dangers to these feathered wildlings hovered even in the sunlit sky, and sometimes turned the songs of those speckled-breasted laverocks into wails of despair.
Behold yonder hawk silently darting from the pine-wood! High, high he darts into the air; he has positioned his quarry, and downwards now he swoops like Indian arrow from a bow, and the lark's bright and happy song is hushed for ever. His beautiful mate sitting on her cosy nest with its five brown eggs looks up astonished and frightened. Down fall a few drops of red blood, as if the sky had wept them. Down flutter a few feathers, and her dream of happiness is a thing of the past.
And that poor widowed lark will forsake her eggs now, and wander through the heath and the scrub till she dies.
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