hed
across horizontally from side to side of the pool, the feet resting upon
a rock ledge beneath. It needed not the agonised stare upon that awful
upturned face--or rather what once had been a face--to tell in what
unspeakable torture this wretched being had died. To my mind and to
Falkner's came the recollection of our gruesome find that grey afternoon
in the northern wilds of Zululand.

Two more bodies, one little better than a skeleton, were bound similarly
on each side of the central one. As we gazed, spellbound with horror,
we saw that which pointed to one of these being the body of a white man.

Now a dark figure appeared on the brink above the central victim,
appeared so silently and suddenly as to lend further horror to this
demon haunted spot. We watched it in curdling horror as it stooped,
then reached down and cut the thongs which held first one wrist then the
other. The body thus released toppled heavily into the pool with a dull
splash that echoed among the overhanging rocks. Then it disappeared.

The figure, straightened up now, stood watching the troubled surface for
a moment. Standing there full in the moonlight I thought to recognise
the face. It was that of one of Tyingoza's people whom I knew by sight,
but could not fit with a name. Then he turned to clamber back, crooning
as he did so, a strange weird song. It was not very intelligible, but
was full of _sibongo_ to the Water Spirit, who should now delight in a
fresh victim, a rare victim, one by the side of which all former
sacrifices were but poor. Then would the land have rain again--would
drink all the rain it needed.

Now the blood seemed to rush to my brain as though to burst it. A red
mist came before my eyes, and my heart seemed to hammer within me as
though it would betray our place of concealment without fail. For I
realised who this new victim--this rare victim--was to be, the victim
who was to take the place of the ghastly shapeless horror which we had
seen disappear beneath that awful surface. A warning touch from Jan
Boom brought me back to recollection and sanity again.

Through our concealing screen we saw the man who had released the corpse
drop down the rock. Another had joined him, and now the two crouched
down in the shadow with an air of eager expectancy as though waiting for
something or somebody. One held in his hand a coiled thong. Then we
heard voices, one a full, sonorous, male tone talking in the Zulu;