“What was it, father?” asked the lad at last.
“Naam van de drommel! I cannot say,” returned the Boer. “I thought it was a lion. It is no lion, surely; it may be a baboon.”
They sat waiting, listening intently, for another ten minutes. Then Hermannus sprang to his feet. “Whatever it was,” he exclaimed, “the thing is dead. I shall see what it is.”
He plucked a big brand from the fire, and, grasping his rifle, stepped forward. His father followed his example, and with great caution they moved out beyond the flickering circle of the firelight. Thirty paces away their torches showed them something. It rested on the veldt there, silent, completely motionless. Again they advanced and stood over the thing.
It lay there at their feet, naked, hairy, something on the figure of a man, yet surely not a man. Blood was oozing softly from a big wound in the back, where Van Driel’s bullet had entered.
“An ape of some kind, father,” queried Hermannus, “but not a baboon. What do you make of it?”
“Alas, no ape, I fear,” returned Van Driel, with a shudder. “This is a bad night’s work. ’Tis a wild man. I have heard of such things, but never yet have I set eyes upon one. Pick it up by the legs there, we will carry it to the fire.”
At the firelight they examined with repugnance and even fear the thing that had met its death. It was a man! Nay. It had once been a man; it was now but a travesty of mankind. Deeply tanned all over; with its shock of dark hair and beard, now going grey, and a shaggy growth almost covering the loathsome body, it looked a mere beast of the field. The thing had gone mostly upon hands and knees—or upon hands and feet—and the parts that touched the soil were thickened and callous. How many years this poor terrible relic of humanity had lived here alone; how it had gained its living; how escaped the fierce carnivora of the desert, were mysteries that no man could answer. The silent rocks, the grass, the trees, the air—these were the only witnesses, and they were for ever unite.
There was no more sleep for the Van Driels that night. They sat talking in low, subdued tones until dawn, and then, taking up the spoor of the wild man, ran the trail down to a cavern among the rocks, where the poor creature had made its lair. Here were bones; the remains of animals, of lizards, birds, locusts, even fish, upon which, with berries, bulbs, and wild roots, the thing had existed for all these years!
Returning to the fire, they picked up the now stiff form, more hideous and loathsome than ever by broad daylight, and carried it to its den. This they sealed from the wild beasts with heavy rocks and stones.