e knees of the stone Witch, so that presently I
stood alone in front of the cave. Now, having conquered the wolf ghosts
and no blow struck, my heart swelled within me, and I walked to the
mouth of the cave proudly, as a cock walks upon a roof, and looked in
through the opening. As it chanced, the sinking sun shone at this hour
full into the cave, so that all its darkness was made red with light.
Then, once more, Umslopogaas, I grew afraid indeed, for I could see the
end of the cave.

"Look now! There is a hole in the wall of the cave, where the firelight
falls below the shadow of the roof, twice the height of a man from the
floor. It is a narrow hole and a high, is it not?--as though one had cut
it with iron, and a man might sit in it, his legs hanging towards the
floor of the cave. Ay, Umslopogaas, a man might sit in it, might he not?
And there a man sat, or that which had been a man. There sat the bones
of a man, and the black skin had withered on his bones, holding them
together, and making him awful to see. His hands were open beside him,
he leaned upon them, and in the right hand was a piece of hide from his
moocha. It was half eaten, Umslopogaas; he had eaten it before he died.
His eyes also were bound round with a band of leather, as though to hide
something from their gaze, one foot was gone, one hung over the edge of
the niche towards the floor, and beneath it on the floor, red with rust,
lay the blade of a broken spear.

"Now come hither, Umslopogaas, place your hand upon the wall of the
cave, just here; it is smooth, is it not?--smooth as the stones on which
women grind their corn. 'What made it so smooth?' you ask. I will tell
you.

"When I peered through the door of the cave I saw this: on the floor of
the cave lay a she-wolf panting, as though she had galloped many a
mile; she was great and fierce. Near to her was another wolf--he was
a dog--old and black, bigger than any I have seen, a very father of
wolves, and all his head and flanks were streaked with grey. But this
wolf was on his feet. As I watched he drew back nearly to the mouth of
the cave, then of a sudden he ran forward and bounded high into the air
towards the withered foot of that which hung from the cleft of the rock.
His pads struck upon the rock here where it is smooth, and there for a
second he seemed to cling, while his great jaws closed with a clash but
a spear's breadth beneath the dead man's foot. Then he fell back with
a howl of ra