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Then, as I glanced about me, with eyes prepared to behold I knew not what of horror, I perceived that many of the ornamental flowering shrubs on either side of the path leading to the house were beaten down and withered, as though stampeding cattle or a host of men had swept over them; while far up the pathway, and even upon the stoep of the house itself, a multitude of aasvogels were squatted motionless, apparently gorged, while others were waddling slowly and heavily to and fro.
Oh! you may laugh, but I tell you that already you have brought ill-luck upon yourself. Remember my words, baas, when you miss two of the five aasvogels." "Bosh!" I exclaimed, or, rather, its Dutch equivalent.
How I had escaped being smashed to pieces was inexplicable, for the sheer wall of rock that penned me in was, I judged, at least five hundred feet in height, and the horses' bones now picked clean by the aasvogels had been smashed by the terrible fall.
Finding at the end of thirty minutes that nothing happened to indicate the presence of an enemy, for the aasvogels had returned to their carrion feast, Wilmshurst essayed the remaining portion of his interrupted advance. The kopje, he decided, was to be the extreme limit of his reconnoitring expedition.
Halting his men, Wilmshurst made a careful survey of the ground by means of his binoculars. A number of large birds aasvogels, or African vultures were circling over the derelict. It was therefore safe to conclude that no human being, unless helpless to lift a hand, was in the vicinity. In the midst of his investigations Tari Barl approached with a self-satisfied smile on his ebony features.
Having taken a series of compass bearings and entered a few details on his map Wilmshurst started off for a kopje midway between the aasvogels and the springbok. Although he took the greatest pains to keep out of sight the nimble quadrupeds suddenly bolted, flying like the wind.
'The nights are cold, Inkoos, he wailed, 'and my folk are scattered, and I have no kraal. The aasvogels follow me, and I can hear the blesbok. 'What about the blesbok? I asked with a start. 'The blesbok are changing ground, he said, and looked me straight in the face. 'And where are the hunters? I asked.
The aasvogels feast undisturbed on bloated carcasses of horses and cattle lying on the debatable ground between the Line of Investment and the Line of Defence, the barbel in the river leap at the flies, and partridge and wild guinea-fowl drink in the shallows, and bathe in the dry hot sand between the boulder-stones.
Nobody would be likely to find the bodies of the two men and horses under that lonely bank. Certainly they would not be found before the aasvogels had picked them clean, and these would be at work upon them now. And if they were found, the paper would have rotted or been blown away, or, at the worst, rendered so discoloured as to be unreadable.
But if we did ... if we are ever to be estranged or parted, it would be better ... oh! it would be better if you had passed by in the waggon, and left me lying, and the aasvogels and the wild-dogs had done the rest." The Mother-Superior said, loosening the clinging arms, and speaking sternly: "Never, my daughter. You do gravely wrong to say so.
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