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Beyond them were no lights penetrating the gloom from the windows of the range of houses. The silence of the place was death-like. And then something grew out of the earth almost at their feet. A hollow cry followed the movement, a cry that was ghostly and shivering, and loud enough only for them to hear, and Sokwenna stood at their side. He talked swiftly. Only Alan understood.
What do you say?" Alan was stunned. Speech failed him as he realized the monstrous assurance with which Graham and Rossland were playing their game. And when he made no answer Rossland continued to drive home his arguments, believing that at last Alan was at the point of surrender. Up in the dark attic the voices had come like ghost-land whispers to old Sokwenna.
Alan was inspired now by a great caution, a growing premonition which stirred him with uneasiness, and he began his own preparations as soon as Sokwenna had started on his mission. The desire to leave at once, without the delay of an hour, pulled strong in him, but he forced himself to see the folly of such haste. He would be away many months, possibly a year this time.
He was saying, in that jumble of sound which it was difficult for even Alan to understand and which Sokwenna had never given up for the missionaries' teachings that he could hear feet and smell blood; and that the feet were many, and the blood was near, and that both smell and footfall were coming from the old kloof where yellow skulls still lay, dripping with the water that had once run red.
Then, suddenly, he saw her under the Chinese lanterns in front of his cabin. Sokwenna, so old that he hobbled double and looked like a witch, stood beside her. In a moment Sokwenna's head disappeared, and there came the booming of a tom-tom. As quickly as the crowd had gathered about him, it fell away. The beaters squatted themselves in their semicircle again. Fireworks began to go off.
"And you left her alone after that?" Stampede shrugged his shoulders as he valiantly kept up with Alan's suddenly quickened pace. "She insisted. Said it meant life and death for her. And she looked it. White as paper after her talk with Rossland. Besides " "What?" "Sokwenna won't sleep until we get back. He knows. I told him. And he's watching from the garret window with a.303 Savage.
He beckoned to him and then entered his cabin, waiting while Sokwenna crawled down from his post and came hobbling over the open, a crooked figure, bent like a baboon, witch-like in his great age, yet with sunken eyes that gleamed like little points of flame, and a quickness of movement that made Alan shiver as he watched him through the window. In a moment the old man entered. He was mumbling.
Because Sokwenna was the "old man" of the community and therefore the wisest and because with him lived his foster-daughters, Keok and Nawadlook, the loveliest of Alan's tribal colony Sokwenna's cabin was next to Alan's in size. And Alan, looking at it now and then as he ate his breakfast, saw a thin spiral of smoke rising from the chimney, but no other sign of life.
From him could be exacted nothing more than the price of death; he would be made to pay that, as Sokwenna had paid. For her remained the unspeakable horror of Graham's lust and passion.
"What did he say?" asked the girl. "That he is glad we are back. He heard the shots and came to meet us." "And what else?" she persisted. "Old Sokwenna is superstitious and nervous. He said some things that you wouldn't understand.
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