thunder boom, now growing fainter, relieved it from time to time:
but still the immensity of the white fiery cloud shed its lamp-like
light, upon him and the scene of this silent tragedy. Then he made a
careful search around. The weapon that had been flung at him he picked
up, also the great knobstick, and dropped them over into the rift; and
as he smoothed back the trampled grass into position as best he could,
for the first time he spoke.

"_Hlala gahle_! A fighter's weapons should be buried with him, and this
is a right fitting tomb for such."

Again he glanced around. The flat, table-like mountain top was silent
once more. It was time to descend, and having thus decided, a new and
louder thunder roll from a dark curtain swiftly moving up from another
direction caused him no anxiety but rather the reverse. The witness of
one tragedy had furnished material for another, and the storm now coming
up would thoroughly and effectually eliminate any possible remaining
trace of either.

CHAPTER ONE.

OF AN UNWONTED PERIL.

The girl was drawing.

From where she sat a great mountain head, turreted with bronze-faced
krantzes, rose up against the unclouded blue, set off by a V-shaped
foreground of tossing, tumbling foliage--in a word, virgin forest. The
grass was long in the little open space, and in and among the trailers
hanging like network from the trees, birds were making the warm air
merry with many a varied call and pipe. Now and then a grey monkey,
reassured by the repose of the human occupant of the spot, would climb
partly down, almost above her head, and hang, perking his black face in
a knowing attitude, as though quite competent to criticise the
water-colour sketch now rapidly taking shape: to skip aloft, chattering,
as some sudden movement on the part of the artist appealed strongly to
his instinct of self preservation. And then the dark shadowy depths of
the surrounding trees would be alive with responsive mutterings and
cackles, where the less venturesome of the troop lurked, awaiting
further developments.

She, of such sights and sounds took no notice, for had she not been born
and bred among them, and did they not constitute the ordinary
surroundings of everyday life? Seated on a low flat rock, her colour
box and water tin beside her, she worked on serenely in the warmth of
the windless air, in nowise feeling the latter oppressive, for she was
used to it.

She made a pretty picture as sh