Project Gutenberg's The White Hand and the Black, by Bertram Mitford

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Title: The White Hand and the Black
A Story of the Natal Rising

Author: Bertram Mitford

Release Date: June 20, 2010 [EBook #32911]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The White Hand and the Black, by Bertram Mitford.

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THE WHITE HAND AND THE BLACK, BY BERTRAM MITFORD.

PROLOGUE.

A weight had fallen from him--the weight of a lifetime; the galling,
hopeless, demoralising weight which had paralysed his energies,
sterilised his brain, and, in the case of a subject less clear-sighted,
would have brought him down to drink or suicide, possibly both. And now
it had fallen from him.

The man on the mountain top looked around, and as he did so, something
of buoyancy that he had not known for years, came over his mind. He was
free--free. His life was now his own. He could have sung aloud in the
stillness of the night. And yet the said night was not one calculated
to effect excessive exaltation in any mind. It was oppressive and
boding; and even its usual voices, of bird and beast and insect life,
seemed hushed as in awe of something impending. The broad moon glared
drearily down, ghastly athwart a filmy haze; and ever and anon a heavy
boom seemed to shake the earth, while huge, plume-like masses of cloud
rising higher and higher above the cliffs and ridges, gleamed beautiful
in golden depths with every intermittent flash. When the storm broke it
would be an appalling one, but to the man on the mountain top this
brought no misgiving whatever, yet he knew that it would overtake him
long before he had time to reach home.

He knew something else, knew that it was vital to him to choose his
steps carefully. For the summit was flat and to all appearance smooth
and unbroken, yet it was seamed with crevices; crevices partly or
entirely hidden by the coarse, sour herbage; crevices of no great wid