Tween Snow and Fire Part 43

His warning was by no means superfluous. The ground ended abruptly across their path. Suddenly, shooting up, as it were, beneath their very feet, pealed forth again that frightful, blood-curdling yell.

It was awful. Starting backward a pace or two, the perspiration pouring from their foreheads, they stood and listened. On the Kafir no such impression had the incident effected. He understood the position in all its grim significance.

"Look down," he said, meaningly. "Look down, _amakosi_."

They did so. Before them yawned an irregular circular hole or pit, about thirty feet deep by the same in diameter. The sides were smooth and perpendicular; indeed, slightly overhanging from the side on which they stood. Opposite, the glistening surface of the rock rose into a dome. But with this hole the cavern abruptly ended, the main part of it, that is, for a narrow cleft or "gallery" branched off abruptly at right angles. From this pit arose such a horrible effluvium that the explorers recoiled in disgust.

"Look down. Look down," repeated Josane.

The luminous disk from the lantern swept round the pit. Upon its nearly level floor crawled the loathsome, wriggling shapes of several great serpents. Human skulls strewn about, grinned hideously upwards, and the whole floor of this ghastly h.e.l.l-pit seemed literally carpeted with a crackling layer of pulverised bones. But the most awful sight of all was yet to come.

Gathered in a heap, like a huge squatting toad, crouched a human figure.

Human? Could it be? Ah! it had been once. Nearly naked, save for a few squalid rags black with filth, this fearful object, framed within the brilliantly defined circle of the bull's-eye, looked anything but human. The head and face were one ma.s.s of hair, and the long, bushy, tangled beard screening almost the whole body in its crouching att.i.tude imparted to the creature the appearance of a head alone, supported on two hairy, ape-like arms, half man, half tarantula. The eyes were glaring and blinking in the light with mingled frenzy and terror, and the mouth was never still for a moment. What a sight the grizzly denizen of that appalling h.e.l.l-pit--crouching there, mopping and mowing among the gliding, noisome reptiles, among the indescribable filth and the grinning human skulls! No wonder that the spectators stood spell-bound, powerless, with a nerveless, unconquerable repulsion.

Suddenly the creature opened its mouth wide and emitted that fearful demoniacal howl which had frozen their blood but a few moments back.

Then leaping to its feet, it made a series of desperate springs in its efforts to get at them. Indeed it was surprising the height to which these springs carried it, each failure being signalled by that blood-curdling yell. Once it fell back upon a serpent. The reptile, with a shrill hiss, struck the offending leg. But upon the demoniac those deadly fangs seemed to produce no impression whatever. Realising the futility of attempting to reach them, the creature sank back into a corner, gathering itself together, and working its features in wild convulsions. Then followed a silence--a silence in its way almost as horrible as the frightful shrieks which had previously broken it.

The spectators looked at each other with ashy faces. Heavens! could this fearful thing ever have been a man--a man with intellect and a soul--a man stamped with the image of his maker?

"He is the last, _Amakosi_," said the grave voice of Josane. "He is the last, but not the first. There have been others before him,"

designating the skulls which lay scattered about. "Soon he will be even as they--as I should have been had I not escaped by a quick stroke of luck."

"Great Heaven, Josane! Who is he?" burst from the horror-stricken lips of Shelton and Hoste simultaneously. Eustace said nothing, for at that moment as he gazed down upon the mouldering skulls, there came back to him vividly the witch-doctress's words, "They who look upon `The Home of the Serpents' are seen no more in life." Well did he understand them now.

"The man whom you seek," was the grave reply. "He whom the people call Umlilwane."

An e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of horror again greeted the Kafir's words. This awful travesty, this wreck of humanity, that this should be Tom Carhayes! It was scarcely credible. What a fate! Better had he met his death, even amid torture, at the time they had supposed, than be spared for such an end as this.

Then amid the deep silence and consternation of pity which this lugubrious and lamentable discovery evoked, there followed an intense, a burning desire for vengeance upon the perpetrators of this outrage; and this feeling found its first vent in words. Josane shook his head.

"It might be done," he muttered. "It might be done. Are you prepared to spend several days in here, _Amakosi_?"

This was introducing a new feature into the affair--the fact being that each of the three white men was labouring under a consuming desire to find himself outside the horrible hole once more--again beneath the broad light of day. It was in very dubious tones, therefore, that Shelton solicited an explanation.

"Even a maniac must eat and drink," answered Josane. "Those who keep Umlilwane here do not wish him to die--"

"You mean that some one comes here periodically to bring him food?"

"_Ewa_."

"But it may not be the persons who put him here; only some one sent by them," they objected.

"This place is not known to all the Gcaleka nation," said Josane.

"There are but two persons known to me who would dare to come within a distance of it. Those are Ngcenika, the witch-doctress, and Hlangani, who is half a witch-doctor himself."

"By lying in wait for them we might capture or shoot one or both of them when they come to bring the poor devil his food, eh, Josane?" said Shelton. "When are they likely to come?"

"It may not be for days. But there is another side to that plan. What if they should have discovered that we are in here and decide to lie in wait for us?"

"Oh, by Jove! That certainly is a reverse side to the medal," cried Hoste, with a long whistle of dismay. And indeed the idea of two such formidable enemies as the redoubted Gcaleka warrior and the ferocious witch-doctress lurking in such wise as to hold them entirely at their mercy was not a pleasant one. There was hardly a yard of the way where one determined adversary, cunningly ambushed, would not hold their lives in his hand. No. Any scheme for exacting reprisals had better keep until they were once more in the light of day. The sooner they rescued their unfortunate friend and got quit of the place the better.

And even here they had their work fully cut out for them. How were they to get at the wretched maniac? The idea of descending into that horrible pit was not an alluring one; and, apart from this, what sort of reception would they meet with from its occupant? That the latter regarded them in anything but a friendly light was manifest. How, then, were they ever to convey to the unfortunate creature that their object was the reverse of hostile? Tom Carhayes was well-known to be a man of great physical power. Tom Carr hayes--a gibbering, mouthing lunatic--a furious demoniac--no wonder they shrank from approaching him.

"Silence! Darken the light!"

The words, quick, low, peremptory--proceeded from Josane. In an instant Eustace obeyed. The slide of the lantern was turned.

"I listen--I hear," went on the Kafir in the same quick whisper. "There are steps approaching."

Every ear was strained to the uttermost. Standing in the pitchy blackness and on the brink of that awful pit, no one dared move so much as a foot.

And now a faint and far-away sound came floating through the darkness; a strange sound, as of the soft ba.s.s of voices from the distant spirit-world wailing weirdly along the ghostly walls of the tunnel. It seemed, too, that ever so faint a light was melting the gloom in the distance. The effect was indescribable in its awesomeness. The listeners held their very breath.

"Up here," whispered Josane, referring to the shaft already mentioned.

"No! show no light--not a glimmer. Hold on to each other's shoulder-- you, Ixeshane, hold on to mine--Quick--_Hamba-ke_." [Go on.]

This precaution, dictated by the double motive of keeping together in the darkness, and also to avoid any one of the party accidentally falling into the pit--being observed, the Kafir led the way some little distance within the shaft.

"Heavens!" whispered Hoste. "What about the snakes? Supposing we tread on one?"

In the excitement of the moment this consideration had been quite overlooked. Now it struck dismay into the minds of the three white men.

To walk along in pitch darkness in a narrow tunnel which you know to be infested with deadly serpents, with more than an even chance of treading upon one of the noisome reptiles at every step, is a position which a.s.suredly needs a powerful deal of excitement to carry it through.

"_Au_! Flash one beam of light in front, Ixeshane," whispered the guide. "Not behind--for your life, not behind!"

Eustace complied, carefully shading the sides of the light with the flaps of his coat. It revealed that the cave here widened slightly, but made a curve. It further revealed no sign of the most dreaded enemy of the human race.

Here, then, it was decided to lie in wait. The lights carried by those approaching would hardly reach them here, and they could lurk almost concealed, sheltered by the formation of the tunnel.

The flash from Eustace's lantern had been but momentary. And now, as they crouched in the inky gloom, the sense of expectation became painful in its intensity. Nearer and nearer floated the wailing chant, and soon the lurking listeners were able to recognise it as identical with the wild, heathenish _rune_ intoned by their guide--the weird, mysterious invocation of the Serpent.

"Harm us not, O Snake of snakes!

Do us no hurt _O Inyeka 'Nkulu_!"

The sonorous, open vowels rolled forth in long-drawn cadence, chanted by two voices--both blending in wonderful harmony. Then a cloud of nebulous light filled up the entrance to their present hiding place, hovering above the fearful h.e.l.l-pit where the maniac was imprisoned, throwing the brink into distinct relief.

The watchers held their very breath. The song had ceased. Suddenly there was a flash of light in their eyes, as from a lantern.

Two dark figures were standing on the brink of the hole. Each carried a lantern, one of those strong, tin-rimmed concerns used by transport-riders for hanging in their waggon-tents. There was no lack of light now.

"Ho, Umlilwane!" cried a deep, ba.s.s voice, which rumbled in hoa.r.s.e echoes beneath the domed roof, while the speaker held his lantern out over the pit. "Ho, Umlilwane! It is the dog's feeding time again. We have brought the dog his bones. Ho, ho!"

The wretched maniac who, until now, had kept silence, here broke forth again into his diabolical howls. By the sound the watchers could tell that he was exhausting himself in a series of bull-dog springs similar to those prompted by his frenzy on first discovering themselves. At each of these futile outbursts the two mocking fiends shouted and roared with laughter. But they little knew how near they were laughing for the last time. Three rifles were covering them at a distance of fifty yards--three rifles in the hands of men who were dead shots, and whose hearts were bursting with silent fury. Josane, seeing this, took occasion to whisper under cover of the lunatic's frenzied howls:

"The time is not yet. The witch-doctress is for me--for me. I will lure her in here, and when I give the word--but not before--shoot Hlangani. The witch-doctress is for me."

The ident.i.ty of the two figures was distinct in the light. The hideous sorceress, though reft of most of the horrid accessories and adornments of her order, yet looked cruel and repulsive as a very fiend--fitting figure to harmonise with the Styx-like gloom of the scene. The huge form of the warrior loomed truly gigantic in the sickly lantern light.

"Ho, Umlilwane, thou dog of dogs!" went on the latter. "Art thou growing tired of thy cool retreat? Are not the serpents good companions? _Haul_ Thou wert a fool to part so readily with thy mind.