Up the pass they ran, leaping over stones and dead cattle till at length they reached the tableland at the top. Here once again Van Vooren paused for an instant, for he bethought him that, perhaps, he might hold the mouth of the cleft against his pursuer. But his wicked heart was too full of fear to let him stay, so at full speed he set forward across the plain, heading for that chair rock where still sat the whitened corpse, for there he thought he could defend himself. Ralph followed him somewhat more slowly, for of a sudden he had grown cold and cunning, and, knowing that his foe could not escape him, he desired to save his breath for the last struggle. For six hundred yards or more they ran thus, and when Van Vooren began to climb the pedestal of rock Ralph was fifty paces behind him. Presently he also reached the pedestal and paused to look. Already Swart Piet was standing by the stone chair, but it was not at him that he looked, but rather at the figure which was tied in the chair that he now saw for the first time. That figure no longer sat upright, draped in its white fur cloak, for it had been disturbed, as I shall tell presently, and the cloak was half torn from it. Now it hung over the arm of the chair, the ghastly white face looking down towards Ralph and beneath it the bare black breast. Ralph stared, wondering what this might mean. Then the answer to the riddle flashed into his mind, and he laughed aloud, for here he saw the handiwork of Sihamba. Yes, that grisly shape told him that his love still lived and that it was to win the secret of her whereabouts that the devil above him had practised torment upon the little doctoress. Ralph laughed aloud and began to climb the pinnacle. He might have waited till Jan, who was struggling up the pass after them, arrived with his gun, but he would not wait. He had no fear of the man above and he was certain of the issue of the fray, for he knew that God is just. As for that man above, he grinned and gibbered in his disappointed rage and the agony of his dread; yes, he stood there by the painted corpse and gibbered like an ape. “Your evil doing has not prospered over much, Piet Van Vooren,” called Ralph, “and presently when you are dead you will taste the fruits of it. Suzanne shall be mine till the end as she was mine from the beginning, but look upon the Death-wife that your wickedness has won,” and he pointed at the body with his spear.