Avoiding the groups of thirst-tormented people who sat or wandered about in the coolness of the night, they passed through the gates of the kraal unheeded, and walking quickly across the wide stretch of tableland reached the eastern edge of the cliff. Now upon the very verge of this cliff rose a sharp pinnacle of rock fifty feet or more into the air, and upon the top of this pinnacle was that stone shaped like a great chair, in which Suzanne sat day by day, poised like an eagle over the dizzy gulf of space, for the slopes of the mountain swelled five hundred feet beneath, watching for the help that never came. Not far from the base of this point Sihamba began to search in the starlight till she found what she wanted, the body of a young woman who had crept here to die of thirst, and whose death and the place of it had been reported to her. Now she took the jar of white clay, and, aided by Zinti, set about her ghastly task, daubing the stuff thickly upon the cold features and the neck and arms and feet. Soon it was done, for such work needed little care, but then began their true toil since the corpse must be carried up the sharp point of rock, and that by no easy path. Had not Zinti been so strong it could never have been done; still, with the aid of Suzanne and Sihamba herself, at last it was finished. Up that steep place they toiled, the three of them, dragging the dead body from knob to knob of rock, well knowing that one false step in the gloom would send them to be broken to pieces hundreds of feet beneath. At length they reached the little platform where there was scarcely room for all of them to stand with their burden, and climbing on to the stone which was called the Chair, Zinti drew the dead woman into the seat of it. Then as Sihamba bade him he wrapped her in Suzanne’s long white cape of goat-skin, putting the hood of it upon her head, after which he made the corpse fast in a sitting posture, lashing it round the neck and middle to the back of the stone with the white tanned rimpis in such fashion that it could not fall or even slip. “So,” said Sihamba grimly, “there sits the bridge upon whom Swart Piet can feast his eyes while you seek safety across the mountains. Now back to the town, for from this height I can already see light glimmering in the east.” Accordingly they returned to the hut and entered it, leaving Zinti without, none noting them since by now the multitudes were thronging the narrow way. Here Sihamba lit the lamp, and by its light once more examined Suzanne carefully, retouching the dye in this place and in that, till she was sure that no gleam of white showed through it.