Sihamba turned, and, holding out her hands towards the horses, muttered something rapidly.
“What are you doing, mistress?” asked Zinti.
“Perhaps I am throwing a charm upon these animals, that they may neither neigh nor whinny till we come again, for if they do so we are lost. Now let us go, and—stay, bring the gun with you, for you know how to shoot.”
So they started, slipping through the wet wood like shadows. For ten minutes or more they crept on thus towards the dark line of cliff, Zinti going first and feeling the way with his fingers, till presently he halted.
“Hist!” he whispered. “I smell people.”
As he spoke, they heard a sound like to that of someone sliding down rocks. Then a man challenged, saying, “Who passes from the krantz?” and a woman’s voice answered, “It is I, Asika, the wife of Bull-Head.” “I hear you,” answered the man. “Now tell me, Asika, what happens yonder.”
“What happens? How do I know what happens?” she answered crossly. “About sunset Bull-Head brought home his new wife, a white chieftainess, for whom we built the hut yonder; but the fashions of marriage among these white people must be strange indeed, for this one came to her husband, her feet bound, and with a face like to the face of a dead woman, the eyes set wide, and the lips parted. Yes, and they blindfolded her in the wood there and carried her through this hole in the rock down to the hut where she is shut in.”
“I know something of this matter,” answered the man; “the white lady is no willing wife to Bull-Head, for he killed her husband and took her by force. Yes, yes, I know, for my uncle was one of those with him when the deed was done, and he told me something of it just now.”
“An evil deed,” said Asika, “and one that will bring bad luck upon all of us; but then, Bull-Head, our chief, is an evil man. Oh! I know it who am of the number of his Kaffir wives. Say, friend,” she went on, “will you walk a little way with me, as far as the first huts of the kraal, for there are ghosts in the wood, and I fear to pass it alone at night.”
“I dare not, Asika,” he answered, “for I am set here on guard.”