"How in the world did you do it?" Her interest was quickened.

Undoubtedly there was something uncanny in this man's strength.

"You're not very heavy, you know," he said.

His arm was still around her, and she suffered it; for the darkness still frightened her when she allowed herself to think.

"Have you had anything to eat?" she asked him next.

"Not quite lately," said Nick. "I've been smoking. I wonder you didn't notice it."

His tone was somehow repressive, but she ignored it with a growing temerity. After all, he did not seem such an alarming person on a nearer acquaintance.

"Does smoking do as well as eating?" she asked.

"Much better," said Nick promptly. "Care to try?"

She shook her head in the darkness. "I don't think you are telling the truth," she said.

"What?" said Nick.

He spoke carelessly, but she did not repeat her a.s.sertion. A sudden shyness descended upon her, and she became silent. Nick was quiet too, and she wondered what was pa.s.sing in his mind. But for the tenseness of the arm that encircled her, she could have believed him to be dozing. The silence was becoming oppressive when abruptly he broke it.

"See!" he said. "Here comes the dawn!"

She started and stared in front of her, seeing nothing.

"Over to your left," said Nick. And turning she beheld a lightening of the darkness high above them.

She breathed a sigh of thankfulness, and watched it grow. It spread rapidly. The walls of the ravine showed ghostly grey, then faintly pink. Through the dimness the boulders scattered about the stream stood up like mediaeval monsters, and for a few panic-stricken seconds Muriel took the twining roots of a rhododendron close at hand for the coils of a gigantic snake. Then as the ordinary light of day filtered down into the gloomy place she sighed again with relief, and looked at her companion.

He was sitting with his chin on his hand, gazing across the ravine. He did not stir or glance in her direction. His yellow face was seamed in a thousand wrinkles.

A vague misgiving a.s.sailed her as she looked at him. There was something unnatural in his stillness.

"Nick!" she said at length with hesitation.

He turned sharply, and in an instant the ready grin leaped out upon his face. "Good morning," he said lightly. "I was just thinking how nice it would be to go down there and have a wash. We've got to pa.s.s the time somehow, you know. Will you go first?"

His gaiety baffled her, but she did not feel wholly rea.s.sured. She got up slowly, and as she did so, her attention was caught by something that sent a thrill of dismay through her.

"Don't look at my feet, please," said Nick. "They won't bear inspection at present."

She turned horrified eyes to his face, as he thrust them down into a bunch of fern. "How dreadful!" she exclaimed. "They are all cut and gashed. I didn't know you were barefooted."

"I wasn't," said Nick. "I've got some sandals here. Don't look like that! You make me want to cry. I a.s.sure you it doesn't hurt in the least."

He grinned again as he uttered this cheerful lie, but Muriel was not deceived.

"You must let me bind them up," she said.

"Not for the world," laughed Nick. "I couldn't walk with my feet in poultice-bags, and we shall have some more rough marching to do to-night. Now don't you worry. Run along like a good girl. I'm going to say my prayers."

It was flippantly spoken, but Muriel realised that it would be better to obey. She turned about slowly, and began to make her way down to the stream.

The sunlight was beginning to slant through the ravine, and here and there the racing water gleamed silvery. It was intensely refreshing to kneel and bathe face and hands in its icy coldness. She lingered long over it. Its sparkling purity seemed to reach and still the throbbing misery at her heart. In some fashion it brought her peace.

She would have prayed, but she felt she had no prayer to offer. She had no favour to ask for herself, and her world was quite empty now.

She had no one in her heart for whom to pray.

Yet for awhile she knelt dumb among the lifeless stones, her face hidden, her thoughts with the father whose loss she had scarcely begun to realise. It might be that G.o.d would understand and pity her silence, she thought drearily to herself.

The rush of the water drowned all sound but its own, and the memory of Nick, waiting above, faded from her consciousness like a dream. Her brain felt numb and heavy still. She did not want to think. She leaned her head against a rock, closing her eyes. The continuous babble of the stream was like a lullaby.

Under its soothing influence she might have slept, a blessed drowsiness was stealing over her, when suddenly there flashed through her being a swift warning of approaching danger. Whence it came she knew not, but its urgency was such that instinctively she started up and looked about her.

The next instant, with a sound half-gasp, half-cry, she was on her feet, and shrinking back against her sheltering boulder in the paralysis of a great horror. There, within a few yards of her and drawing nearer, ever nearer, with a beast-like stealth, was a tall, black-bearded tribesman. Transfixed by terror, she stood and gazed at him, waiting dumbly, cold from head to foot, feeling as though her very heart had turned to stone.

Nearer he came, and yet nearer, soundlessly over the stones. His eyes, gleaming, devilish, were to her as the eyes of a devouring monster.

In her agony she tried to shriek aloud, but her voice was gone, her throat seemed locked. She was powerless.

Close to her, for a single instant he paused; then, as in a lightning flash, she saw the narrow, sinewy hand and snake-like arm dart forward to seize her, felt every muscle in her body stiffen to rigidity in antic.i.p.ation of its touch, and shrank--shrank in every nerve though she made no outward sign of shrinking.

But on the instant, with a panther-like spring, sure, noiseless, deadly, another figure leapt suddenly across her vision. There followed a violent struggle in front of her, a confused swaying to and fro, a cry choked instantly and terribly, the tinkling sound of steel falling upon stone. And then both figures were on the ground almost at her feet, locked together in mortal combat, fighting, fighting like demons in a silence that throbbed with the tumult of unrestrained savagery.

Later she never could remember how long it took her to realise that the second apparition was Nick, or if she had known it from the first.

She felt herself hovering upon the brink of a great emptiness, a void immense, and yet all her senses were alive and tingling with horror.

With agonised perception of what was pa.s.sing, she yet felt numbed: as though her body were dead, but still contained a vital, tortured soul.

And it was thus that she presently saw Nick's face bent above the black-bearded face of his enemy; and remembered suddenly and horribly a picture she had once seen of the devil in the wilderness.

With his knees he was gripping the writhing body of his fallen foe.

With his hands--it came upon her as she watched with a shock of anguished comprehension--he was deliberately and with deadly intention choking out the man's life.

"Curse you! Die!" she heard him say and his voice sounded like the snarl of a wild beast. His upper lip was drawn back, the lower one was between his teeth, and from it the blood dripped continuously upon his hands and upon the dark throat he gripped.

"Give me that knife!" he suddenly said, with an upward jerk of the head.

A dagger was lying almost within his reach, close to her foot. She could have kicked it towards him had not her body been fast bound in that deathly inertia. But her whole soul rose up in wild revolt at the order. She tried to cry out, to implore him to have mercy, but she could not make a sound. She could only stand in frozen horror, and witness this awful thing.

She saw Nick shift his grip to one hand and reach out with the other for the weapon. He grasped it and recovered himself. A great darkness was descending upon her, but it did not come at once. It hovered before her eyes, and seemed to pa.s.s, and again she saw the horror at her feet; saw Nick, bent to destroy like an eagle above his prey, merciless, full of strength, terrible; saw the man beneath him, writhing, convulsed, tortured; saw his upturned face, and starting eyes; saw the sudden downward swoop of Nick's right hand, the flash of the descending steel.

In her agony she burst the spell that bound her, and shrieking turned to flee from that awful sight.

But even as she moved, the darkness came suddenly back upon her, enveloping her, overwhelming her--a darkness that could be felt. For a little she fought against it frantically, impotently. Then her feet seemed to totter over the edge of a dreadful, formless silence. She knew that she fell.

CHAPTER VI