Adventure stories; Africa -- Fiction; Hunting guides -- Fiction; Quatermain, Allan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
Stella said that the night which followed was more like a hideous
nightmare than a reality. She was never able to tell me all that
occurred in it. She had a vague recollection of being borne over rocks
and along kloofs, while around her echoed the horrible grunts and
clicks of the baboons. She spoke to Hendrika in English and Kaffir,
imploring her to let them go; but the woman, if I may call her so,
seemed in her madness to have entirely forgotten these tongues. When
Stella spoke she would kiss her and stroke her hair, but she did not
seem to understand what it was she said. On the other hand, she could,
and did, talk to the baboons, that seemed to obey her implicitly.
Moreover, she would not allow them to touch either Stella or the child
in her arms. Once one of them tried to do so, and she seized a dead
stick and struck it so heavily on the head that it fell senseless.
Thrice Stella made an attempt to escape, for sometimes even Hendrika’s
giant strength waned and she had to set them down. But on each occasion
she caught them, and it was in these struggles that Stella’s clothes
were so torn. At length before daylight they reached the cliff, and
with the first break of light the ascent began. Hendrika dragged them
up the first stages, but when they came to the precipitous place she
tied the strips of hide, of which she had a supply wound round her
waist, beneath Stella’s arms. Steep as the place was the baboons
ascended it easily enough, springing from a knob of rock to the trunk
of the tree that grew on the edge of the crevasse. Hendrika followed
them, holding the end of the hide reim in her teeth, one of the baboons
hanging down from the tree to assist her ascent. It was while she was
ascending that Stella bethought of letting fall her handkerchief in the
faint hope that some searcher might see it.
By this time Hendrika was on the tree, and grunting out orders to the
baboons which clustered about Stella below. Suddenly these seized her
and little Tota who was in her arms, and lifted her from the ground.
Then Hendrika above, aided by other baboons, put out all her great
strength and pulled the two of them up the rock. Twice Stella swung
heavily against the cliff. After the second blow she felt her senses
going, and was consumed with terror lest she should drop Tota. But she
managed to cling to her, and together they reached the cleft.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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