e shall be mine till the end as she was mine from the beginning,
but look upon the Death-wife that your wickedness has won," and he
pointed at the body with his spear.

Black Piet made no answer, nor did Ralph speak any more, for he must set
himself to finish his task. The Boer took a heavy stone and threw it
at him, but it missed him and he could find no more. Then gripping the
wrist of the corpse in his left hand to steady himself upon that giddy
place, he leant forward and prepared to stab Ralph with the knife as
he set foot upon the platform. Ralph saw his plan, and stopping in his
climb, he took off his coat and wound it round his left arm as a shield.
Then he came on slowly, holding the broad spear in front of him. At the
last he made a rush and reached the flat space of rock. Piet stabbed
at him, but the strength of the thrust lost itself in the folds of the
coat.

Now who can say what happened. Round and round the rock chair they
swung, Van Vooren still holding fast to the arm of the dead woman who
was lashed in it. Yes, even from where I stood five hundred feet below I
could see the flash of spear and knife as they struck and struck again.

At length a blow went home; the Zulu assegai sank deep into Van Vooren's
chest and he hung backwards over the edge of the abyss, supported only
by his grip of the dead arm--from below it looked as though he were
drawing the corpse to him against its will. Yes, he hung back and
groaned aloud. Ralph looked at him and laughed again, since though he
was gentle-hearted, for this man he had no pity. He laughed, and crying
"That curse of God you mocked at falls at last," with a sudden stroke he
drew the sharp edge of the spear across the lashing that held the body
to the seat.

The rimpi parted, and with a swift and awful rush, like that of a
swooping bird, the dead woman and the living man plunged headlong into
space. One dreadful yell echoed down the pitiless precipices, followed
presently by a soft thudding sound, and there, lodged upon a flat rock
hundreds of feet beneath, lay what had been Piet Van Vooren, though,
indeed, none could have told that it was he.

Thus ended the life of this man, this servant of the devil upon earth,
and even now, after all these years, I can find but one excuse for him,
that the excess of his own wickedness had made him drunk and mad. Yes,
I believe that he who was always near to it, went quite mad when Ralph
struck him with the whip after th