No. Lying up somewhere under the banks. In hot weather they're fond
of lying in a waterhole, but on a cool night like this--not. I must
come and stalk the brute another night though; and yet, do you know, it
seems strange, but I don't like interfering with anything that bears a
sort of religious significance to anybody. And the snake does come in
that way with Zulus."

She thought a moment. Then:

"You remember, dear, how I told you that one of the things this man was
going to show father was the mystery of the waterhole. Now supposing
that horror had suddenly seized him?"

An uncomfortable wave swept through me. The fact is that no white man,
however well he is known to natives, ever gets really to the bottom of
the darker mysteries of their superstitions, which indeed remain utterly
unsuspected in most cases, so well are they concealed. Who could say
what might underlie this one! However I answered:

"I don't think there would have been danger of that sort. Ukozi would
have shown him the performance we have witnessed, as something very
wonderful. As a matter of fact it isn't wonderful at all, in that it
resolves itself into a mere question of snake charming. Ukozi has half
trained this brute by feeding it periodically as we have seen. That's
all. Hallo!"

Well might I feel amazement, but the exclamation had escaped me
involuntarily. We had come round the pool now, and here, very near the
spot whereon Ukozi had gone through his strange performance--
instinctively we had kept a little back from the water--an odour struck
upon my nostrils, and it was the same sickly overpowering effluvium that
had filled the air when my horse had refused to proceed on that
memorable night I had intended to ride back from Kendrew's.

"What is it?" exclaimed Aida, with a start.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. I've frightened you, and you are a little
wound up already by that uncanny performance," I answered.

"Frightened? No. I don't believe I could be that when I'm with you. I
always feel so safe. Otherwise it would seem strange that this witch
doctor whom we have not seen for so long, and in fact whom we thought
had left this part of the country, should have been here right in our
midst all the time."

"He may not have been. He may only just have returned," I said.
"Worthies of his profession are inclined to be somewhat sporadic in
their movements. Meanwhile if I were you, I wouldn't say anything about
what w