The glooming shadows of night crept on apace.
Renshaw, lying there in the wild rocky defile, felt the poison stealing
insidiously through his veins in a kind of slow drowsy stupor. He knew
that he was doomed; he realised that even if the wild Korannas did not
speedily come up and put an end to his sufferings yet his hour had come.
The poison was too deadly for antidote, and he had no antidote.
In his stupor he hardly heard the receding hoof-strokes of his
companion--his companion for whose life he had given his own, and who
now rode away leaving him alone in that remote and savage solitude to
die.
He lay there as he had sunk down. The night grew pitchy black between
those grim, frowning walls of cliff. The faint stir of a cool breeze
played in fitful puffs about his pallid brow already cold and moist with
the dews of approaching death. The stars flashed from the vault above
in a narrow riband of gold between the loom of the great cliffs against
the sky. The melancholy howl of some prowling beast rose now and again
upon the night.
There was a patter, patter of stealthy feet among the stones--a gleam of
scintillating green from ravening eyes. Nearer, nearer came the pit-pat
of those soft footfalls. The wild creatures of the waste had scented
their prey.
Man--the lord of the beasts of creation. Man--before whose erect form
the four-footed carnivora of the desert fled in terror--what was he
now--how was he represented here? A mere thing of flesh and blood, an
abject thing--prostrate, helpless, dying. An easy prey. The positions
were reversed.
The gleam of those hungry eyes--the baring of gaunt jaws, the lolling
tongues--were as things unknown to the stricken adventurer. The shrill
yelp, echoing from the great krantzes, calling upon more to come to the
feast--the snapping snarl, as hungry rivals drew too near each other--
all passed unnoticed. Nearer, nearer they came, a ravening circle. For
they knew that the prey was sure.
What a contrast! This man, with the cool, dauntless brain--the hardened
frame so splendidly proportioned, lay there in the pitchy blackness at
the mercy of the skulking, cowardly scavengers of those grim mountain
solitudes. And what had wrought this strange, this startling contrast?
Only a mere tiny puncture, scarcely bigger than a pin prick.
A cold nose touched his cheek. The contact acted like a charm. He sat
bolt upright and struck out violently. A soft furry coat gave way
before his fist--there was a yelp, a snarl of terror, and a sound of
pattering feet scurrying away into deeper darkness, but--only to return
again.
As though the shock had revived him, Renshaw's brain began to recover
its dormant faculties. It awoke to the horror, the peril of the
position. And with that awakening came back something of the old
adventurous, dauntless resolution. He remembered that violent
exercise--to keep the patient walking--was among the specifics in cases
of venomous snake-bite, which in conjunction with other antidotes he had
more than once seen employed with signal success. But in his own case
the other antidotes were wanting.
Still the old dogged determination--the strength of a trained will--
prevailed. He would make the effort, even if it were to gain some
inaccessible ledge or crevice where he might die in peace. Even in the
midst of his numbed and torpid stupor the loathing horror wherewith he
had encountered the touch of the wild creature's muzzle acted like a
whip. To be devoured by those brutes like a diseased sheep--faugh!
Gaining his feet with an effort, he unscrewed the stopper of his flask
and drank off the contents. With the poison working in his system the
fiery spirit was as water to him. But its effect was invigorating, and
setting his face toward the cliffs he staggered forth into the darkness.
Before the once more erect figure of their dread enemy, Man, the
skulking jackals and hyenas slunk back in dismay. But only into the
background. Stealthily, warily they watched his progress, following
afar softly and noiselessly upon his footsteps. For their keen instinct
satisfied them that this stricken representative of the dominant species
would never leave their grisly rock-girt haunt alive. It was only a
question of patience.
The instinct, too, of the latter led him on. His stupefied brain still
realised two things. Under the shelter of the crags he would be in
safer hiding from human enemies, and that haply a ledge among the same
would afford him a secure refuge from the loathsome beasts now shadowing
him, and ready to pounce upon him when he should be too weak to offer
any resistance.
On--on, he pressed--ever upward. Steeper and steeper became the way.
Suddenly he stopped short. Before him was a wall of rock.
He peered searchingly upward in the darkness. A cleft slanted obliquely
up the cliffs face. His knowledge of the mountains and their formation
told him that here might be the very thing he sought. His instinct
still guiding him, he began to scale the cleft. He found it an easy
matter. There were plenty of rough projections, affording hand and foot
hold. The ghoul-like scavengers of the desert could not follow him
here.
Under ordinary circumstances the climb would have been a difficult one,
especially at night. But now, as in the case of the somnambulist,
matter triumphed over mind. The mind being dormant and the centre of
gravity undisturbed by mental misgivings, however unconscious, he
ascended safely.
The climb came to an end. Here was the very thing. A ledge, at first
barely four feet broad, and then widening out as it ran round the face
of the cliff--and sloping--not outward as ordinarily, but inward. What
he did not see in his now returning torpor, was a black, narrow cave
running upward in continuation of the cleft by which he had ascended.
He crawled along the ledge. Here at any rate nothing could disturb his
last hours. The cool night wind fanned his brow--the single strip of
radiant stars seemed to dance in one dazzling ocean of light. His
stupefaction reasserted itself. He sank down in dead unconsciousness.
Was it slumber or death?
It was not death. Renshaw awoke at last; awoke to consciousness in a
strange half-light. Above was a roof of overhanging rock--underneath
him, too, was the same hard rock. A strip of sky, now a pale blue, was
all he could see.
Raising himself upon his elbow, he looked forth. The sun was setting in
a blood-red curtain of cloud beyond the distant mountain peaks, shedding
a fiery glow upon the stupendous chain of iron cliffs which overhung the
weird and desolate defile. It came home to Renshaw then, that he must
have slept for nearly twenty-four hours.
He still felt terribly weak, and his dazed and dizzy brain was still
beclouded as in a fog. The events of yesterday, of his lifetime, in
fact, seemed but as a far-away and uncertain dream. At any rate he
could die in peace here--in peace with all mankind. He felt no fear of
death, he had faced it too often. The utter loneliness of his last
hours seemed to hold no terrors for him either, and he even found
himself drowsily thinking that such surroundings--the grim, beetling
cliffs, the wild and rugged peaks, the utter desolation of this remote
untrodden solitude--were meet witnesses to the last hours of one who had
spent the bulk of his life in their midst. His mind went back to the
present undertaking and its disastrous results--to the "Valley of the
Eye," to Sellon's selfish treachery--and his own self-sacrifice. But
for that same act of treachery, tardily repented of as it was, they
would both have got out safe, for it was during the time thus lost that
the horde of Bushmen and Korannas had stolen up to surprise them. Ah,
well, what did it matter now? What did anything matter? The treasure--
the precious stones which he had thrown into the balance against his own
life--what did they count now? He had enough of them about him at that
moment to place him in affluent circumstances, had it been willed that
he should live. Yet of what account were they now? Mere dross.
Then there arose before him a vision of Sunningdale--the cool, leafy
garden, the spreuws piping among the fig trees, the plashing murmur of
the river, and Violet Avory, as he had last seen her--no not then so
much as at the moment when she had extracted that promise. Well, he had
kept his promise, at any rate. And then Violet's image faded, and,
strange to say, the face which bent over his rocky couch, even the hard
bed of death, was not hers, but that of Marian--sweet, pitying,
soothing. And then the poor, clouded brain grew dim again--dim and
restful.
But there are times when a subtle instinct of peril will penetrate even
a drugged understanding. Uneasily Renshaw raised himself on his elbow,
and again looked forth. The sun had disappeared now; a red afterglow
still lingered on the loftier peaks, but the abrupt scarps of the great
mountains were assuming a purpler gloom. Looking up, he noted that the
overhanging rock projected beyond the slope of the ledge, forming a kind
of roof. Looking downward along the ledge he saw--
A huge leopard crouching flat upon its belly, its long tail gently
waving, its green scintillating eyes fixed upon him. As they met his, a
low rumbling purr issued from the beast's throat, and with a stealthy,
almost imperceptible glide, it crawled a little nearer.
With consummate presence of mind, he followed its example. Without
changing his position he felt cautiously for his gun. Fool that he was!
He had left it behind--surely at the spot where he had sunk down in his
stupor. Then he felt for his revolver; but that too, he had somehow
contrived to lose. He was unarmed.
The beast was barely twenty yards distant. The low, rumbling purr
increased in volume. As he kept his eyes fixed on those of the huge
cat, Renshaw felt a strange eerie fascination creeping over him. The
thing was not real. It was a nightmare--an illusion come to haunt his
last hours. He would break the spell.
Again he looked forth. The loom of the towering peaks was blacker now
against the silvery sky--the grey shadows deeper within the desolate
kloofs. He noted too that he was at an elevation of nearly thirty feet
from the ground. In his weakened state there was no escape that way.
The hungry savage beast crawled nearer and nearer along the ledge. The
feline purr changed to a hideous snarl, as with eyes glittering like
green stars from its round, speckled head, it bared its fangs, and
gathered its lithe muscular body for the fatal spring.
And the man lay powerless to avoid it; unarmed, helpless, unable to
stir, to move a finger in his own defence.