Adventure stories; Africa -- Fiction; Hunting guides -- Fiction; Quatermain, Allan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
I ran from the graveyard and called aloud at the top of my voice, but
no answer came. Meanwhile the native was more profitably engaged in
tracing their spoor. He followed it for about a hundred yards till he
came to a clump of mimosa bush that was situated between the stream and
the ancient marble quarries just over the waterfall, and at the mouth
of the ravine. Here he stopped, and I heard him give a startled cry. I
rushed to the spot, passed through the trees, and saw this. The little
open space in the centre of the glade had been the scene of a struggle.
There, in the soft earth, were the marks of three pairs of human
feet—two shod, one naked—Stella’s, Tota’s, and _Hendrika’s_. Nor was
this all. There, close by, lay the fragments of the two dogs—they were
nothing more—and one baboon, not yet quite dead, which had been bitten
in the throat by the dogs. All round was the spoor of numberless
baboons. The full horror of what had happened flashed into my mind.
My wife and Tota had been carried off by the baboons. As yet they had
not been killed, for if so their remains would have been found with
those of the dogs. They had been carried off. The brutes, acting under
the direction of that woman-monkey, Hendrika, had dragged them away to
some secret den, there to keep them till they died—or kill them!
For a moment I literally staggered beneath the terror of the shock.
Then I roused myself from my despair. I bade the native run and alarm
the people at the kraals, telling them to come armed, and bring me guns
and ammunition. He went like the wind, and I turned to follow the
spoor. For a few yards it was plain enough—Stella had been dragged
along. I could see where her heels had struck the ground; the child
had, I presumed, been carried—at least there were no marks of her feet.
At the water’s edge the spoor vanished. The water was shallow, and they
had gone along in it, or at least Hendrika and her victim had, in order
to obliterate the trail. I could see where a moss-grown stone had been
freshly turned over in the water-bed. I ran along the bank some way up
the ravine, in the vain hope of catching a sight of them. Presently I
heard a bark in the cliffs above me; it was answered by another, and
then I saw that scores of baboons were hidden about among the rocks on
either side, and were softly swinging themselves down to bar the path.
To go on unarmed as I was would be useless. I should only be torn to
pieces as the dogs had been. So I turned and fled back towards the
huts. As I drew near I could see that my messenger had roused the
settlement, for natives with spears and kerries in their hands were
running up towards the kraals. When I reached the hut I met old
Indaba-zimbi, who wore a very serious face.
“So the evil has fallen, Macumazahn,” he said.
“It has fallen,” I answered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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