ust
be Nahoon, who had been killed up yonder, and whose dead body the waters
had brought down to the haunted forest as they had brought her alive.
Yes, it must be Nahoon, and she would be forced to see her husband
devoured before her eyes. The thought of it overwhelmed her. That he
should die by order of the king was natural, but that he should be
buried thus! Yet what could she do to prevent it? Well, if it cost her
her life, it should be prevented. At the worst they could only kill
and eat her also, and now that Nahoon and her father were gone, being
untroubled by any religious or spiritual hopes and fears, she was not
greatly concerned to keep her own breath in her.

Slipping through the hole in the tree, Nanea walked quietly towards the
cannibals--not knowing in the least what she should do when she reached
them. As she arrived in line with the fire this lack of programme came
home to her mind forcibly, and she paused to reflect. Just then one of
the cannibals looked up to see a tall and stately figure wrapped in a
white garment which, as the flame-light flickered on it, seemed now to
advance from the dense background of shadow, and now to recede into it.
The poor savage wretch was holding a stone knife in his teeth when he
beheld her, but it did not remain there long, for opening his great
jaws he uttered the most terrified and piercing yell that Nanea had
ever heard. Then the others saw her also, and presently the forest was
ringing with shrieks of fear. For a few seconds the outcasts stood
and gazed, then they were gone this way and that, bursting their path
through the undergrowth like startled jackals. The _Esemkofu_ of Zulu
tradition had been routed in their own haunted home by what they took to
be a spirit.

Poor _Esemkofu!_ they were but miserable and starving bushmen who,
driven into that place of ill omen many years ago, had adopted this
means, the only one open to them, to keep the life in their wretched
bodies. Here at least they were unmolested, and as there was little
other food to be found amid that wilderness of trees, they took what the
river brought them. When executions were few in the Pool of Doom, times
were hard for them indeed--for then they were driven to eat each other.
That is why there were no children.

As their inarticulate outcry died away in the distance, Nanea ran
forward to look at the body that lay on the ground, and staggered back
with a sigh of relief. It was not Nahoon, but sh