pain and rage, and lifting the
Watcher endways, drove it down with both hands, as a man drives a stake
into the earth, and that with so great a stroke that the skull of the
wolf was shattered like a pot, and he fell dead, dragging me with him.
Presently I sat up on the ground, and, placing the handle of the Watcher
between his jaws, I forced them open, freeing my flesh from the grip
of his teeth. Then I looked at my wounds; they were not deep, for the
leather bag had saved me, yet I feel them to this hour, for there is
poison in the mouth of a wolf. Presently I glanced up, and saw that the
she-wolf had found her feet again, and stood as though unhurt; for this
is the nature of these ghosts, Umslopogaas, that, though they fight
continually, they cannot destroy each other. They may be killed by man
alone, and that hardly. There she stood, and yet she did not look at me
or on her dead mate, but at him who sat above. I saw, and crept softly
behind her, then, lifting the Watcher, I dashed him down with all my
strength. The blow fell on her neck and broke it, so that she rolled
over and at once was dead.

"Now I rested awhile, then went to the mouth of the cave and looked
out. The sun was sinking: all the depth of the forest was black, but the
light still shone on the face of the stone woman who sits forever on the
mountain. Here, then, I must bide this night, for, though the moon shone
white and full in the sky, I dared not wend towards the plains alone
with the wolves and the ghosts. And if I dared not go alone, how much
less should I dare to go bearing with me him who sat in the cleft of
the rock! Nay, here I must bide, so I went out of the cave to the spring
which flows from the rock on the right yonder and washed my wounds and
drank. Then I came back and sat in the mouth of the cave, and watched
the light die away from the face of the world. While it was dying there
was silence, but when it was dead the forest awoke. A wind sprang up
and tossed it till the green of its boughs waved like troubled water on
which the moon shines faintly. From the heart of it, too, came howlings
of ghosts and wolves, that were answered by howls from the rocks
above--hearken, Umslopogaas, such howlings as we hear to-night!

"It was awful here in the mouth of the cave, for I had not yet learned
the secret of the stone, and if I had known it, should I have dared to
close it, leaving myself alone with the dead wolves and him whom
the wolves ha