n run
more swiftly. But after him came one who was swifter than he, the
light-footed, long-limbed Englishman with rage in his heart, and an
awful fire of vengeance blazing in his eyes.

Up the pass they ran, leaping over stones and dead cattle till at length
they reached the tableland at the top. Here once again Van Vooren paused
for an instant, for he bethought him that, perhaps, he might hold the
mouth of the cleft against his pursuer. But his wicked heart was too
full of fear to let him stay, so at full speed he set forward across the
plain, heading for that chair rock where still sat the whitened corpse,
for there he thought he could defend himself. Ralph followed him
somewhat more slowly, for of a sudden he had grown cold and cunning,
and, knowing that his foe could not escape him, he desired to save his
breath for the last struggle.

For six hundred yards or more they ran thus, and when Van Vooren
began to climb the pedestal of rock Ralph was fifty paces behind him.
Presently he also reached the pedestal and paused to look. Already Swart
Piet was standing by the stone chair, but it was not at him that he
looked, but rather at the figure which was tied in the chair that he now
saw for the first time. That figure no longer sat upright, draped in its
white fur cloak, for it had been disturbed, as I shall tell presently,
and the cloak was half torn from it. Now it hung over the arm of the
chair, the ghastly white face looking down towards Ralph and beneath it
the bare black breast.

Ralph stared, wondering what this might mean. Then the answer to the
riddle flashed into his mind, and he laughed aloud, for here he saw
the handiwork of Sihamba. Yes, that grisly shape told him that his love
still lived and that it was to win the secret of her whereabouts that
the devil above him had practised torment upon the little doctoress.

Ralph laughed aloud and began to climb the pinnacle. He might have
waited till Jan, who was struggling up the pass after them, arrived with
his gun, but he would not wait. He had no fear of the man above and he
was certain of the issue of the fray, for he knew that God is just. As
for that man above, he grinned and gibbered in his disappointed rage and
the agony of his dread; yes, he stood there by the painted corpse and
gibbered like an ape.

"Your evil doing has not prospered over much, Piet Van Vooren," called
Ralph, "and presently when you are dead you will taste the fruits of it.
Suzann