ckled, and roared aloft, and the smoke of the
heathenish burnt offering, areek with the horrid smell of burning flesh,
floated in great clouds right to the mouth of the cleft, and above and
over all, now augmented to thunder tones by the voices of the later
arrivals, the strophes of their fierce and gloomy devil-worship--the
paeans in praise of the Snake, in whom now rested the spirit of the dead
King--arose in weird and deafening chorus above this holocaust of agony
and fire and blood.

Transfixed with horror and disgust, Blachland watched this demoniacal
orgy, the more so that in it he saw his own fate in the event of
detection. Suddenly the great serpent at the back of the cleft, which
had been quiescent for some time, emitted a loud hiss--rearing its head
in startling suddenness. Was the brute going to attack him? Then a
desperate idea came into his head. Under cover of the smoke would it be
practicable to slip out, and getting round the pile of boulders, lie
hidden in some crevice or cranny until dark? Again the monster emitted
a hiss, this time louder, more threatening. And now he thought he saw
the reason. The smoke was creeping into the cleft, not thickly as yet,
but enough of it to render the atmosphere unpleasant, and indeed he
could hardly stifle a fit of coughing. This would bring the reptile
out, perhaps even it was partly designed to do so--in order to satisfy
the heathenish watchers that their tutelary deity, the serpent of
Umzilikazi, was still there, was still watching over its votaries. In
that ease, was he not in its way? It could only find egress by passing
over him--and in that case, would it fail to strike him with its
venomous deadly fangs? Outside, the assegais of the savages, the death
by torture. Within, the horrible repulsive strike of the fearful
reptile, the convulsions and agony attendant upon the victims of the
bite of that species before death should claim them. It was a choice,
but such a choice that the very moment of making might turn a man's hair
white in the event of his surviving.

And now the smoke rolled in thicker, and, noonday as it was, those below
were quite invisible. A heavy gliding sound from the far end of the
cleft was audible. The horror was drawing its fearful coils clear of
its covering. In a moment it would be upon him, mad, infuriated in its
frenzied rush for the open air. It was now or never. A thick volume of
smoke rolled up as Blachland scramble