Renshaw Fanning's Quest Part 24

"Stick to the horses, wherever possible," he said. "Once lose them, we are like a man in mid-ocean with oars but no sail. Besides, we may find another way down--a much better one than this."

A dozen yards of steep slope, right on the brink of the abyss, covered with loose shingle, had to be crossed prior to gaining the secure foothold of the gully itself. A false step, a jerk back of the bridle on the part of the led horse, might send steed, or rider, or both, into s.p.a.ce.

"Up, old horse!" said Renshaw, encouragingly, as he took the lead. His steady old roadster, however, fully took in the situation. He gave one snort, a scramble or two, and he was safe within the gully.

But Sellon's steed was disposed to show less gumption. At first he refused to try the place at all; then nearly hurled his master over the brink by rucking at the bridle when half-way across; and the hideously suggestive sound of a shower of loosened rubble sliding into the abyss fairly made his said master's blood curdle. However, with much snorting and scrambling, he ultimately suffered himself to be led into safety.

The ascent was now comparatively easy, though with horses it was a tedious and tiresome business. The gully itself formed a huge natural staircase, seemingly about a couple of hundred feet in height. Up they went, stumbling, scrambling--the ring of the horses' hoofs upon the stones waking the echoes in the dead silence of the spot. The grey shades of briefest twilight had already enshrouded the pa.s.sage in gathering gloom.

"Well, Fanning, what's the betting on my shot being the right one?"

cried Sellon, whose mercurial spirits had gone up sky-high under the influence of a new excitement. "We must be more than halfway up this beastly water-pipe. A few minutes more will decide it. What's the betting?"

"I still say, don't make too sure, Sellon. I'm sorry to say it occurs to me that the expression 'up there,' on which this new idea of yours turns, may mean nothing more than when a man talks of 'up country'. It may not mean on top of a mountain, don't you know."

"The devil it mayn't! What an old wet blanket you are, Fanning. Well, we shall soon see now. Hallo! What have you got there?"

For the other was gazing attentively at something. Then without a word he dropped the end of his bridle, and clambering over a couple of boulders, was stooping over the object which had caught his eye.

It was something round and white. Maurice could see that much before following his companion, which, however, he hastened to do. Then both men stood staring down at the object.

The latter was embedded in a hole in the ground, firmly wedged between two rocks, half of it projecting. At first sight it might have been mistaken for an ostrich egg.

Renshaw bent down and picked up the object. Something of a tug was necessary to loosen it from the imprisoning rock. He held in his hand a human skull.

"What's the matter, old chap?" said Sellon, wonderingly, noticing his companion's face go deadly white, while the hand that held the skull trembled violently. "You seem rather knocked out of time, eh? A thing like that is a queerish sort of find in this G.o.d-forsaken corner; but surely your nerves are proof against such a trifle."

"Trifle, do you call it?" replied Renshaw, speaking quickly and eagerly.

"Look at the thing, man--look at it."

"Well, I see it. What then?" said Maurice, wondering if his friend had gone clean off his head, and uncomfortably speculating on the extreme awkwardness of such an occurrence away here in the wilds.

"What then? Why, it is a white man's skull."

"How do you know that?" said Sellon, more curiously, bending down to examine the poor relic which seemed to grin piteously at them in the falling gloom. One side of the lower part was battered in--giving to the bony face and eyeless sockets a most grisly and leering expression.

"By the formation, of course. But, man alive, don't you see what this find means--don't you see what it means?"

"I suppose it means that some other fellow has been fool enough to scramble up here before us, and has come to mortal grief for his pains.

Wait, though--hold on--by Jove, yes--I do see! Greenway's mate; what does he call him? Jim. That's it, of course. It means that we are on the right track, Fanning, old man. Hooroosh!"

"That's just what it does mean. Observe. This skull is alone--no bones or remnants of bones--no relics of clothing. Now, the absence of anything of the kind points to the fact that the poor chap wasn't killed here. He must have been killed up top, and the skull eventually have been brought here by some wild animal--or possibly lugged to the edge and rolled down of its own accord. Greenway's story points that way too. He says they were attacked while looking down into the valley, for if you remember they had just watched the 'Eye' fade away. Yes, 'Jim,'

poor chap, was killed on top of the mountain, and there lies the 'Valley of the Eye.' How does that pan out, eh?"

"Five ounces to the ton at least," replied Sellon. "Well, we've, as you say, panned out the whole thing to a nicety. There's one ingredient left, though. How about 'the schelm Bushmen'?"

"Oh, we must take our chances of them. The great thing is to have found the place at all. And now, excelsior! It'll be pitch dark directly."

Replacing the skull where he had found it, Renshaw led the way back to the horses, and the upward climb was resumed. But Sellon, following in his wake, was conscious of an unaccountable reaction from his eager burst of spirits, and not all the dazzling prospects of wealth untold to be had for the mere picking up--which awaited him up yonder--could altogether avail to dispel the fit of apprehensive depression which had seized upon him. The discovery of that grisly relic of poor humanity in that savage spot, there amid the gathering shades of night--eloquent of the miserable fate of the unfortunate adventurer done to death on the lonely mountain top, his very bones scattered to the four winds of heaven--inspired in Sellon a brooding apprehension which he could not shake off. What if they themselves were walking straight into an ambush? In the shadowy gloom his imagination, run riot, peopled every rock with lurking stealthy enemies--in every sound he seemed to hear the hiss of the deadly missiles. Then there came upon him a strange consciousness of having been over that spot before. The turret-like craggy gorge, the beetling rocks high overhead in the gloom, all seemed familiar. Ha! His dream! He remembered it now, and shivered. Was it prophetic? It was frightful at the time, and now the horror of it all came back upon him, as, leading his horse, he scrambled on in the track of his companion. He could have sworn that something brushed past him in the darkness. Could it be the spirit of the dead adventurer, destined to haunt this grisly place, this remote cleft on the wild mountainside? A weird wailing cry rang out overhead. Sellon's hair seemed to rise, and a profuse perspiration, not the result of his climbing exertions, started coldly from every pore. What a fool he was!

he decided. It could only be a bird.

"Up at last!" cried the cheery voice of his companion, a score of yards distant, through the darkness. "Up at last. Come along!"

The voice seemed to break the spell which was upon him. It was something, too, to be out of that dismal gully. A final scramble, and Sellon stood beside his companion on the level, gra.s.sy summit of the mountain.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

RENSHAW'S DISCOVERY.

The summit seemed quite flat and level as far as they could judge, for the night had now fully set in. But at the side of it on which they stood the great c.o.c.k's-comb ridge rose high in the air, the loom of its precipitous sides sheering up against the starry zenith, showing indistinct and shadowy in the darkness. The night wind, cool and refreshing, sang in tuneful puffs through the gra.s.ses, and aloft in the gold-spangled sky the Southern Cross and many a flashing constellation glowed forth with that clear incandescence never so vivid as when gazed upon from desert solitudes.

"We can do nothing until the moon rises," p.r.o.nounced Renshaw. "There are some lively krantzes around here, I reckon, and it would never do to take a five-hundred foot header, for want of a little patience. We'll make for the foot of the ridge, and lie by until the moon gets up."

Proceeding cautiously, he led the way up the slope which culminated in the precipitous cliffs of the ridge. He was close under the latter, when his horse suddenly swerved aside, snuffing the air.

"What is it, old horse?" he murmured soothingly, reining in, and peering eagerly into the gloom. Was there a deep cleft in front--or did the rocks shelter a lurking enemy? Both these speculations flashed through his mind, as he whispered back a caution to his companion.

But the horse didn't seem inclined to stand still either. He gently sidled away at an angle, and his rider, curious to fathom the mystery, let him have his head. A few steps more and they were right under the cliff. Then something flashed in the starlight. The horse came to a standstill--down went his head, and a long continuous gurgle told of the nature of his find. He drank in the grateful fluid as if he was never going to stop.

"Well done, old horse!" said his master, dismounting to investigate this inexpressibly welcome phenomenon. It was a deep cleft in the rock about six feet long by three wide, full to the brim of delicious water, in which a great festoon of maidenhair fern trailing from above, was daintily dripping. "Sellon, this is a find, and no mistake. We'll camp down here, and wait for the moon."

"And won't we have a jolly good sluice in the morning. We'll fill that goat-skin of ours, and pour it over each other. I believe it's a week since I had a good wash--not since we left the river. The fellow who laid down the axiom that you're never thoroughly comfortable until you're thoroughly dirty must have been born in a pigsty himself. I know that for the last few days I've been wondering whether I've been looking a greater brute than I felt--or the other way about. Hooray for a good sluice to-morrow, anyhow."

Both were too excited to sleep. Even the consolation of tobacco they denied themselves lest the glimmer of a spark of light should betray their whereabouts to hostile eyes. And they were on short commons, too; the death of the packhorse and the necessity of jettisoning a portion of his load having narrowed down their stock of provisions to that which was the most portable, viz. biltong and ship-biscuit; which comestibles, as Renshaw declared, besides containing a vast amount of compressed nutriment, had the additional advantage of being so hard that a very little of them went a long way. So they lay under the cliffs munching their ration of this very hard tack, and speculating eagerly over the chances the next day might bring forth.

The night wore on. Save for the tuneful sighing of the wind in the gra.s.s, no sound broke through the calm of that wild and elevated solitude. Meteors and falling stars flashed ever and anon in the spangled vault. A whole world seemed to slumber.

Soon Renshaw began to notice an incoherency in his companion's replies.

Fatigue versus excitement had carried the day. Sellon, who was of a full-blooded habit, and uninured to such calls as had of late been made upon his energies, had succ.u.mbed. He was fast asleep.

Left alone in the midst of a dead world, while the whole wilderness slumbered around, Renshaw strove to attune his faculties to the prevailing calm--to try and gain a few hours of much-needed jest. But his nerves were strung to their utmost tension. The speculation of years, the object of his thoughts sleeping and waking, were about to be attained. Sleep utterly refused to visit him.

He could not even rest. At last he rose. Taking up his trusty double gun--rifle and shot-barrel--he wandered forth from the fireless camp.

By the light of the burning stars he picked his way cautiously along the base of the rocky ridge, keeping a careful eye in front of him, above, around, everywhere. Yes, the object of years of anxious thought, of more than one lonely and perilous expedition into the heart of these arid and forbidding wilds, was within reach at last. It must be. Did not that gruesome find down there in the gully point unmistakably to that?

The cool night wind fanned his brow. All the influences of the dead, solemn wilderness were upon him, and his thoughts reverted to another object, but to one upon which he had schooled himself to think no more.

In vain. There on that lonely mountain-top at midnight, in his utter solitude, the man's heart melted within him at the thought of his hopeless love--at the recollection of that anguished face, that broken voice pleading for his forgiveness; for his sympathy in her own dire extremity. What was she doing at that moment, he idly speculated? Ah!

her regrets, her longings, her prayers were not for him, were all for the other; for the man who shared his present undertaking, who slumbered so peacefully but a few hundred yards away.

Why had he brought this man to Sunningdale, to steal away that which should have been his? Why had he brought him here now, to enrich him in order that nothing might be wanting to complete his own utter self-sacrifice? He owed him nothing, for had he not twice paid the debt in full? Why had he stepped between him and certain death? But for his ready prompt.i.tude Maurice Sellon would now be almost as sad a relic of humanity as that upon which they had gazed but a few hours back. But the solemn eyes of the stars looking down upon him, the very grandeur of the mountain solitude, seemed to chide him for such thoughts. What was the puny fate of a few human beings compared with the immensity of ages upon which those stars had looked down--the roll of centuries during which those silent mountains had stood there ever the same?

A perceptible lightening suffused the velvety vault above. The horned moon rose higher over the drear sea of peaks. The crags stood forth silvery in the new-born light--and then, as his glance wandered downwards, Renshaw felt every drop of blood flow back to his heart.

Far below shone a tiny glimmer--the glimmer of a mere spark. But withal so powerful that it pierced the darkness of the far depths as the flash of a ray of fire.