traordinary race.

Then it occurred to Laurence that he had better not let this thing get
too much upon his nerves. It was the result of inaction, he told
himself. Several months of rest and tranquillity had begun to turn him
soft. That would not do. He had got to look matters in the face fairly
and squarely. The ceremony which was to bring him to what would almost
certainly be a fearful fate was set for the fall of the second moon, the
talkers had said--but of this he had been already aware, for the chief
Nondwana and his son were both well known to him. That would give him a
little over six weeks. Escape? Nothing short of a miracle could effect
that, he told himself, remembering the immense tract of desolate country
surrounding the fastnesses of the Ba-gcatya, and the ferocious cannibal
hordes which lay beyond these, and who indeed would wreak a vengeance of
the most barbarous kind upon their old enemy and scourge, the
slaver-chief, did they find him alone, and to that extent no longer
formidable, in their midst.

The friendship of the king? No. That was based on superstition, even as
the friendship of the entire nation. Even it was assumed for an end.
Again, should he boldly challenge the pretensions of the demon-god,
whatever it might be, and asserting himself to be the real one, offer to
slay the horror in open conflict? Not a moment's reflection was needed,
however, to convince him of the utter impracticability of this scheme.
The cherished superstition of a great nation was not to be uprooted in
any such rough-and-ready fashion. The only way of escape left open to
him was that of death--death swift and sudden--the death of the
suicide--to escape the greater horror. But from this he shrank. The grim
hardness of his recent training had nerved him rather to face peril
than to avoid it. He did not care to contemplate such a way out of the
dilemma. He was cornered. There was no way of escape.

And then, as he walked thus, thinking, and thinking hard, in the fierce,
desperate, clearheadedness of a strong, cool-nerved man face to face
with despair, a voice--a female voice, lifted in song--sounded across
his path, nearer and nearer. And now a wave of hope, of relief, surged
through Laurence Stanninghame's heart, for there flooded in upon him, as
with an inspiration, a way out of the situation. For he knew both the
voice and the singer, and at that moment a turn in the bushes brought
the latter and himself face to face.