hardly able to stand from the shock and
the stress of fatigue.

Edith Metford had dismounted and caught him; she was holding the bridle
in her left hand, and winced as if in pain when I accidentally brushed
against her right shoulder. I tied the horse to a young palm, and
begged the girl to ride on. She obeyed me reluctantly. Natalie had to
assist her to remount, so she must have been injured. When I saw her
safely in her saddle, I ran back to Mademoiselle Veret.

The chasm was fast widening. From either side great fragments were
breaking off and falling in with a roar of loose rocks crashing
together, till far down the sound was dulled into a hollow boom. This
ended in low guttural, which growled up from an abysmal depth.
Mademoiselle Veret, or her dead body, lay now on the very edge of the
seam, and I had to harden my heart before I could bring myself to
venture close to it. But I had given my word, and there were no
conditions in the promise when I made it.

I was spared the ordeal. Just as I stepped forward, the slab of rock on
which the girl lay broke off in front of me, and, tipping up, overturned
itself into the chasm. Far below I could see the shimmer of the girl's
dress as her body went plunging down into that awful pit. And
remembering her generous courage and offer of self-sacrifice, I felt
tears rise in my eyes. But there was no time for tears.

I leaped on the bay, and got him into something approaching a gallop,
shouting at the others to keep on, for they were now returning. When I
came up with them, Edith Metford said with a shiver:

"The girl?"

"Is at the bottom of the pit. Ride on."

We gained the shore at last; and our presence there produced the
explanation of the absence of the natives on the pathway to the sea.
They were there before us. Lying prostrate on the beach in hundreds,
they raised their bodies partly from the sands, like a resurrection of
the already dead, and there then rang out upon the night air a sound
such as my ears had never before heard in my life, such as, I pray God,
they may never listen to again. I do not know what that dreadful
death-wail meant in words, only that it touched the lowest depths of
human horror. All along the beach that fearful chorus of the damned
wailed forth, and echoed back from rock and cliff. The cry for mercy
could not be mistaken--the supplication blended with despair. They were
praying to us--their evil spirits, for this wrong had been wrought t