CHAPTER FORTY THREE.
"KWA 'ZINYOKA."
The brooding, oppressive stillness deepened. Not a breath of airstirred the sprays of the bush, which slept motionless as though carvedin stone. Even the very bird voices were hushed. Far below, the soundof the river, flowing over its long stony reaches, came upwards inplaintive monotonous murmur.
All of a sudden Josane turned. He sent one keen searching glancestraight in front of him, and another from side to side.
"The Home of the Serpents is a horrible place," he said. "I have warnedyou that it is so. It is not too late now. The _Amakosi_ can yet turnback."
The awed solemnity of his tone could not fail to impress his hearers,especially two of them. The boding sense of oppression in theatmosphere, the utter wildness of the surroundings, the uneasy,mysterious nature of their quest, and the tall gaunt figure of the oldKafir standing in the semi-gloom beneath the funereal plumes of thestraight stemmed euphorbia, like an oracle of misfortune--all thisaffected the imagination of two, at any rate, of these ordinarilyhard-headed and practical men in a fashion they could scarcely havedeemed possible. The third, however, was impervious to such influences.There was too much involved in the material side of the undertaking.No thought had he to spare apart from this; no scope was there forgiving free rein to his imagination.
"I think I may say we none of us have the slightest idea of turningback!" he answered.
"Certainly not," assented the other two.
Josane looked fixedly at them for a moment. Then he said:
"It is good. Follow me--carefully, carefully. We do not want to leavea broad spoor."
The undergrowth among the straight stiff stems of the euphorbia lookeddense and impenetrable as a wall. To the astonishment of thespectators, the old Kafir lay flat on his stomach, lifted the densetangle just enough to admit the passage of his body, for all the worldas though he were lifting a heavy curtain, and slipped through.
"Come," he whispered from the other side, for he had completelydisappeared from view. "Come--as I did. But do not rend the bushesmore than is absolutely necessary."
They followed, worming their way in the same fashion about a dozenyards. Then an ejaculation of amazement, not unmixed with alarm, brokefrom the lips of Shelton, who was leading. It found an echo on those ofthe other two. Their first instinct was to draw back.
They had emerged upon a narrow ledge, not of rock, or even earth; anarrow ledge of soft, yielding, quaking moss. And it overhung what hadthe appearance of a huge natural well.
It literally overhung. By peering cautiously outward they could see asmooth perpendicular wall of red rock falling sheer and straight to adepth of nearly two hundred feet. Three sides of the hollow--itself notthat distance in width--were similarly constituted, the fourth being aprecipitous, well-nigh perpendicular slope, with a sparse growth ofstunted bushes jotting its rugged sides. A strange, gruesome lookinghole, whose dismal depths showed not the smallest sign of life. Couldthis be the awesome, mysterious "Home of the Serpents?"
But Josane's next words disabused them on this point.
"Tarry not," he said. "Follow me. Do even as I do."
Right to the brink of this horrible abyss the bush grew in a densejungly wall, and it was the roots of this, overgrown with anaccumulation of moss and soil, that constituted the apology for a ledgealong which they were expected to make their way. And there was adistance of at least sixty or seventy yards of this precarious footway,to miss which would mean a certain and terrible death.
It would have been something of an ordeal even had the foothold beenfirm. Now, however, as they made their way along this quivering,quaking, ladder-like pathway of projecting roots interleaved withtreacherous moss, not one of the three was altogether free from anervous and shaky sensation about the knees as he moved slowly forward,selecting the strongest-looking stems for hand-hold. Once a rootwhereon Hoste had put his foot gave way with a muffled crack, lettinghis leg through the fearful pathway up to the thigh. An involuntary cryescaped him as, grasping a stem above him, he drew it forth with asupreme effort, and his brown visage assumed a hue a good many shadespaler, as through the hole thus made he contemplated a little cloud ofleaves and sticks swirling away into the abyss.
"Great Heaven!" he ejaculated. "Are we never coming to the end of thisghastly place?"
"How would you like to cross it running at full speed, like a monkey, asI was forced to do? I told you I had to fly through the air," mutteredJosane, who had overheard. "The horror of it has only just begun--justbegun. _Hau_! Did I not say it was going to be a horrible place?"
But they were destined to reach the end of it without mishap, and rightglad were they to find themselves crawling along a narrow ledge overhungby a great rock, still skirting the abyss, but at any rate there washard ground under them; not a mere shaky network of more or less rottenroots.
"Is this the only way, Josane?" said Eustace at length, as they pausedfor a few minutes to recover breath, and, truth to say, to steady theirnerves a trifle. Even he put the question with some diffidence, for asthey drew nearer and nearer to the locality of their weird quest the oldGcaleka's manner had undergone a still further change. He had becomemorose and taciturn, gloomy and abstracted to a degree.
"It is not," he answered. "It is the only way I know. When I came heremy eyes were shut; when I went away they were open. Then I approachedit from above; now we have approached from below. The way by which Ileft, is the way you have seen."
"O Lord! I wouldn't travel the last infernal hundred yards again for athousand pounds," muttered Hoste ruefully. "And now, I've got to do itagain for nothing. I'd sooner run the gauntlet of the whole Gcalekatribe, as we did before."
"We may have to do that as well," remarked Shelton. "But I think Inever did see such an utterly dismal and God-forsaken corner in my life.Looks as if Old Nick had built it out of sheer devilment."
There was reason in what he said. The immense funnel-like hole seemedan extraordinary caprice of Nature. Nothing grew at the bottom butcoarse herbage and a few stunted bushes. It seemed absolutely lackingin _raison d'etre_. Occurring at the top of a mountain, it would atonce have suggested an ancient crater. Occurring, as it did, in solidground on the steep slope of a lofty river bank that theory seemed notto hold good. On all sides, save the narrow defile they had comethrough, it was shut in by lofty wooded heights breaking here and thereinto a red iron-stone cliff.
Their guide resumed his way, advancing in a listening attitude, and withintense caution. The ledge upon which they crept, now on all-fours,widened considerably. The projecting rock overhead jutted out furtherand further, till it overhung the abyss for a considerable distance.Beneath its shade they were already in semi-gloom. Crawling along,toilsomely, laboriously, one behind the other, each man with all hissenses, all his faculties, on the alert, the fact that their guide hadstopped came upon them as a surprise. Then, as they joined him, andcrouched there side by side--each man's heart beat quicker, each man'sface slightly changed colour. For the overhanging rock had heightened--the ledge had widened to an area of fifteen or twenty feet. Flooringand rock-roof no longer met. At the bottom of this area, both yawnedaway from each other in a black horizontal rift.
Save through this rift there was no getting any further. Quickly eachmind grasped the solution. The cave yawning in front of them was--
"Where does that hole lead to, Josane?" said Hoste.
"_Kwa 'zinyoka_," replied the Gcaleka, impressively.
Such creatures are we of the light and air, that it is safe to assertthat not even the boldest among us can undertake the most cursoryexploration into the bowels of the earth without a consciousness of everso slight a sobering influence, a kind of misgiving begotten of the ideaof darkness and weight--a feeling as though the cavern roof might crushdown upon us, and bury us there throughout the aeons of eternity. It isnot surprising, therefore, that our three friends--all men of triedcourage--should sit down
for a few minutes, and contemplate this yawningblack hole in dubious silence.
It was no reflection on their courage, either. They had just dared andsurmounted a peril trying and frightful enough to tax the strongestnerves--and now before them lay the entrance to an unknown _inferno_; aplace bristling with grim and mysterious terrors such as even theirstout-hearted guide--the only man who knew what they were--recoiled frombraving again. They could hardly believe that the friend andfellow-countrymen, whom all these months they had reckoned among theslain, lay near them within that fearful place, alive, and perchanceunharmed. It might be, however, that the cavern before them was but atunnel, leading to some hidden and inaccessible retreat like the curiouscrater-like hollow they had just skirted.
"_Au_!" exclaimed Josane, with a dissatisfied shake of the head. "Wecannot afford to _sleep_ here. If we intend to go in we must do so atonce."
There was reason in this. Their preparations were simple enough--andconsisted in seeing that their weapons were in perfect readiness.Eustace, too, had lighted a strong bull's-eye lantern with a closingslide. Besides this, each man was plentifully supplied with candles,which, however, it was decided, should only be used if a quantity oflight became absolutely necessary.
Be it remembered not one of the three white men had other than thevaguest idea of the nature of the horrors which this gruesome placemight disclose. Whether through motives of superstition or fromwhatever cause, Josane had hitherto preserved a remarkable silence onthe subject. Now he said, significantly:
"Hear my words, Amakosi. Tread one behind the other, _and look neitherto the right nor to the left, nor above. But look where you place yoursteps, and look carefully_. Remember my words, for I know that of whichI speak."
They compared their watches. It was just half-past one. They sent alast long look at the sky and the surrounding heights. As they did sothere rolled forth upon the heavy air a long, low boom of distantthunder. Then they fell into their places and entered the cavern, thesame unspoken thought in each man's mind--Would they ever behold thefair light of day again?
And the distant, muttering thunder peal, hoarse, heavy, sullen, breakingupon the sultry air, at the moment when they left the outer world,struck them as an omen--the menacing voice of outraged Nature boomingthe knell of those who had the temerity to seek to penetrate herinnermost mysteries.