He had beaten back the engulfing panic, but he was left with a terrible sense of despondency, and a weariness that ached in his bones so that he hardly had strength enough to climb the swaying rope ladder and his feet dragged and scuffed the ochre-red earth of the track, while around him the encampment swam and wavered in the heat and dust as he started back towards the outspan.
Above the hubbub of the camp a clear childish voice rang, and Zouga lifted the golden beard from his chest, his mood lightening as he recognized his son's sweet piping tones.
'Papa! Oh Papa!' Jordan was racing towards him, wild abandon in every frantic pace, his arms pumping and his feet flying over the rutted track, while the mass of silken curls flew about his lovely face.
'Oh Papa, we have searched for you, all night, all day.'
'What is it, Jordan?' The child's distress alarmed Zouga afresh, and he started forward.
Jordan reached him and threw both arms about Zouga's waist, he pressed his face to Zouga's coat front so that his voice was muffled and he trembled like a frightened little wild animal.
'It's Mama! Something has happened to Mama! Something terrible has happened.'
The delirium of typhoid fever came upon Aletta. in hot grey fog banks that blotted out reality and filled her head with phantoms and fantasies which cleared abruptly, leaving her too weak to sit upright, but with her senses enhanced so that her hot skin was hypersensitive to the touch of the clammy flannel against her face and the oppressive weight of her clothing threatened to smother her.
Her vision was sharp and the images enlarged as though seen through a fine reading glass. She could study each long curved eyelash that made up the dense fringe about Jordan's beautiful green eyes. She could see each individual pore in the satiny skin of his cheeks, could delight in the texture of his perfectly bowed lips that trembled now with his agitation and fear as he stooped over her.
She was lost in wonder at her son's beauty, and then the roaring started in her ears again and the beloved child's face receded, until she was looking at it down a long narrow tunnel through the roaring darkness.
She clung desperately to the image, but it began to turn, slowly at first like the wheel of a carriage, then faster still until Jordan's face blurred dizzily and she felt herself tumbling down into the humid darkness again like a leaf upon the roaring wind.
Again the darkness opened, a veil drawn aside in some deep place in her head, and with joy she sought the boy's face again, but instead she saw the falcon high above her.
It was the bird figure of the graven idol that had always been a part of her life since Zouga had come into it. At every cottage, at every outspan or room that they had called home for a day or a week or a month, that stone idol seemed to have been there with them, silent, implacable, heavy with a brooding and ancient malevolence.
She had always hated that idol, had always sensed the aura of evil that surrounded it, but now her hatred and her fear could focus fully upon the stone bird that stood tall above the cot on which she lay.
She cursed it weakly, silently, lying on her back on the narrow, cot, the robe she wore clinging damply to her skin with the fever-sweat; and she mouthed her hatred at the stone image that towered above her on its polished green soapstone column. Again her vision narrowed, became concentrated so that the falcon head was her whole existence.
Then miraculously the blank stone eyes began to glow with a strange golden light; they revolved slowly in the sockets of the polished stone skull, and suddenly they were looking down at her. The pupils were black and glossy, alive and seeing, but cruel and so truly evil that she quailed in terror, staring up at the bird.
The curved stone beak opened, the tongue was sharp as an arrow-head, and from its tip was suspended a single perfect ruby drop of blood in which a star of light glowed , and Aletta knew it was the blood of the sacrifice. The darkness about the bird was filled with moving shadows, the wraiths of the sacrificial victims, the shades of the falcon-priests dead these thousand years, gathering again to reinforce the powers, gathering again to welcome her She screamed, again and again, her terror ringing insanely in her own ears, and then firm hands were shaking her gently, tenderly. Her vision cleared again, but not completely. Everything was dim and blurred, so she screwed up her eyes, still panting wildly from her screams.
'Ralph, is that you?' The strong dark features, already taking on the set of manhood, so different from the sweet angel face of his brother, were close above her.
'Don't take on so, Mama., 'Ralphie, why is it so dark!'she mumbled.
'It's night time.'
'Where is jordie?'
'He is asleep, Mama; he could not keep awake. I sent him to sleep.'
'Call Papa,' she whispered.
'Jan Cheroot is searching for him, he will come soon., 'I'm cold.'
She was trembling violently, and felt him draw the rough blanket up beneath her chin before she sank back into the darkness.
In the darkness she saw the shapes of men hurrying forward, pressing about her; she caught their urgency, the passion of their terrible purpose, and she saw their arms glint in the shadows, the flash of white steel, bared and honed for war. She heard the snick of breech-block, the rattle of bayonet in the scabbard, and here and there in the press she recognized a face, faces she had never seen before but which she recognized instantly with a clairvoyant flash of intuition. One was a man full grown, bearded, strong, who was her son, riding into war, and others, so many others, her blood, her flesh, her bones going forward in that awful expectant throng. She was consumed with terrible grief for them, but she could not weep. Instead, she lifted her eyes and saw the falcon on high, clear in the single brilliant shaft of sunshine that pierced the sombre and ominous clouds that rolled from horizon to horizon, the dun and terrible clouds of war.
The falcon hovered on outstretched pinions against the belly of the clouds, twisting the cruelly beautiful head to peer down, then the long pointed wings folded and the bird dropped in a stoop like the lightning bolt, the great talons reaching forward in the strike. She saw them hook into living flesh, saw the grimace on the face that she had never seen before but knew as deeply as she did her own.
And she screamcd again. Then strong arms held her, the familiar beloved arms for which she had waited so
