The flash from Eustace's lantern had been but momentary. And now, as they crouched in the inky gloom, the sense of expectation became painful in its intensity. Nearer and nearer floated the wailing chant, and soon the lurking listeners were able to recognise it as identical with the wild, heathenish _rune_ intoned by their guide--the weird, mysterious invocation of the Serpent. "Harm us not, O Snake of snakes! Do us no hurt _O Inyeka 'Nkulu_!" The sonorous, open vowels rolled forth in long-drawn cadence, chanted by two voices--both blending in wonderful harmony. Then a cloud of nebulous light filled up the entrance to their present hiding place, hovering above the fearful hell-pit where the maniac was imprisoned, throwing the brink into distinct relief. The watchers held their very breath. The song had ceased. Suddenly there was a flash of light in their eyes, as from a lantern. Two dark figures were standing on the brink of the hole. Each carried a lantern, one of those strong, tin-rimmed concerns used by transport-riders for hanging in their waggon-tents. There was no lack of light now. "Ho, Umlilwane!" cried a deep, bass voice, which rumbled in hoarse echoes beneath the domed roof, while the speaker held his lantern out over the pit. "Ho, Umlilwane! It is the dog's feeding time again. We have brought the dog his bones. Ho, ho!" The wretched maniac who, until now, had kept silence, here broke forth again into his diabolical howls. By the sound the watchers could tell that he was exhausting himself in a series of bull-dog springs similar to those prompted by his frenzy on first discovering themselves. At each of these futile outbursts the two mocking fiends shouted and roared with laughter. But they little knew how near they were laughing for the last time. Three rifles were covering them at a distance of fifty yards--three rifles in the hands of men who were dead shots, and whose hearts were bursting with silent fury. Josane, seeing this, took occasion to whisper under cover of the lunatic's frenzied howls: "The time is not yet. The witch-doctress is for me--for me. I will lure her in here, and when I give the word--but not before--shoot Hlangani. The witch-doctress is for me."