to peer down through the green leaves at the men camped below.
The porters had cut the scherms of Thorn branches and lit the cooking fires when they all heard the lion roar.
The sound checked the murmur of voices for only a few seconds, for it was very faint and distant, seeming to come from miles downstream, and it was a sound to which they had all long grown accustomed.
There had hardly been a night since they had crossed the pass on the elephant road that they had not heard the lions, and in the morning found the pug marks, sometimes almost the size of a soup plate, in the soft earth around the camp where the big inquisitive cats had circled them during the night.
However, Robyn had never seen one of them for they are almost entirely nocturnal, and her first tremors of trepidation had long turned to indifference. She felt quite secure behind the scherm of thornbush, and now at the distant muttering rumble she hardly bothered to look up from her journal in which she was exaggerating only slightly the competent manner in which she had directed the day's march. We are making as good a time as we ever did when Z was leading, she wrote smugly, but did not go on to mention the mood of the porters.
The lion roared only once, and when it was not repeated, the sullen talk around the cooking fires was resumed and Robyn bowed her head once more over her journal.
A few hours after the setting of the sun the camp settled for the night, and lying under her hastily thatched shelter with Juba curled on the mattress of freshly cut grass beside her, Robyn listened to the melodious African voices of her porters fade gradually into silence. She sighed once, deeply, and fell instantly asleep, to wake with a confusion of sound and movement all around her.
She knew that it was late by the frostiness of the air, the utter darkness and her own sleep-drugged stupor.
The night rang with the terrified shouts of men and the rush of their feet. Then there was the thudding report of a musk. et, the crash of heavy logs being thrown on the watch fires and then, heart-stoppingly, the screams of Juba close to her head. Nomusa! Nomusa! ' Still groggy with sleep, Robyn struggled up. She was not certain what she was dreaming and what was reality. What is it?
'A devil! ' shrieked Juba. 'Devils have come to kill us all.'
Robyn flung off her blanket, and ran out of the shelter bare-footed, dressed -only in her flannel nightgown with ribbons in her hair.
At that moment the new logs blazed up on the watch fire, and she saw naked yellow and black bodies, and terrified faces, whites of rolling eyes and open shouting mouths.
The little Hottentot Corporal, stark naked, pranced beyond the fire, brandishing his musket, and as Robyn ran towards him he fired it blindly into the darkness.
Robyn caught his arm as he began to reload.
What is it? ' she shouted into his ear. Leeuw! Lion! ' His eyes were glittering with fright and bubbles of spittle ran from the corners of his mouth. Where is it?
'It has taken Sakkie! It pulled him out of his blankets. 'Quiet! ' Robyn shouted. 'Keep quiet all of you! ' Now, at last, they all turned instinctively to her for leadership. Quiet! ' she repeated, and the gabble of fright and uncertainty died swiftly. Sakkie! ' she called in the silence, and the missing Hottentot's voice answered her faintly from below the steep bank of the river-bed. Die leeuw het my! The lion has me! Die duiwel goon my dood maak, the devil is going to kill me, and he broke off with a shriek of agony.
Above the high-pitched shriek they all clearly heard the crunch of bone, and the muffled growl like that of a dog with food in its jaws. With a rush of horror that raised goose pimples along her arms, Robyn realized that she was listening to the sounds of a man being eaten alive not fifty yards from where she stood. Hy vreet my bene, the voice out of the darkness rang with unbearable agony. 'He is eating my legs, and the gruesome cracking, tearing sounds made Robyn's gorge rise to choke her. Without thinking, she snatched a burning brand from the fire and holding it aloft shouted at the Hottentot Corporal. 'Come on! We must save him! ' She ran forward to the lip of the bank before she realized she was alone, and unarmed.
She looked back. Not one of the men around the fire had followed her. They stood in a tight group, shoulder to shoulder, clutching muskets or axes or assegais, but rooted where they stood. He is finished The Corporal's voice shook with fright. 'Leave him. It's too late. Leave him.'
Robyn hurled the burning brand she held down into the river-bed below her feet, and before its flames faded and pinched out she thought she saw something big and dark and terrifying on the edge of the shadows.
Robyn ran back to the group and snatched a musket from one of the Hottentots. Thumbing back the hammer, she ran once more to the river bank and peered down into the dry bed. It was utterly dark, until suddenly there was somebody at her shoulder, holding high a burning branch from the fire. Juba' Go back' Robyn snapped at the child. Juba was completely naked except for a single string of beads about her hips, and the firelight glinted on her sleek black body.
She could not answer Robyn, for tears were rolling down her plump cheeks and her throat was closed with terror, but she shook her head fiercely at the order to retreat.
Below them, outlined against the white sand of the dry river, was that grotesque dark shape. and the screams of the dying man blended with the grisly wet growls of the animal.
Robyn lifted the musket, but hesitated for fear of hitting the Hottentot. Disturbed by the light, the lion rose, becoming huge and black; swiftly it dragged the weakly wriggling body, dangling between its forelegs back into the darkness beyond the feeble circle of light from the flames.
Robyn drew a deep breath and the heavy musket shook in her hands, but she lifted her chin in a gesture of decision and holding up the skirts of her long nightdress in one hand, went down the path into the river-bed. Juba followed her like a faithful puppy, pressing so hard against her that they nearly lost their balance, but she kept the burning brand on high, though it shook, and the flames wavered smokily. Brave girl! Robyn encouraged her.
'Good brave girl!
They stumbled through the loose white sand that covered the ankles of their bare feet at each pace.
Ahead of them, at the extreme limit of their vision, moved the menacing black shadow, and the deep muttering growls seemed to fill the night around them. Leave it! Robyn shouted, her voice quavering and breaking. 'Drop it, this instantV Unconsciously she was using the same commands as she had given her terrier as a child when it
