Текст книги "The Angels Weep"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

The inhabitants of the laager tumbled out of their beds to gape and question, and then as they began to realize that this little cavalcade heralded the first retaliation against the slaughter and arson committed by the tribes, the cheering began and rose into joyous hysteria.

While Vicky and Elizabeth proudly served them a double ration breakfast under the wagon awning, Ralph and Harry received an endless string of well-wishers, of tearful widows whose husbands had perished under the Matabele assegais, bringing thanks and a half-dozen eggs or a freshly baked cake, of wistful boys come merely to stare at the heroes, and of keen young men demanding eagerly, "Is this where we sign up to join Ballantyne's Scouts?" There were shrieks of delight as Judy set about her long-suffering husband with her baton. The children in the front row clapped their hands as the blows cracked upon Punch's wooden head and his grotesquely humped back, and the bells on his cap jingled.

Swimming valiantly against the mainstream of sentiment, Jon-Jon's face was red as Punch's hooked nose and screwed up with outrage. "Hit her back!" he howled, bouncing up and down. "She's only a girl!" "Spoken like a true Ballantyne," Ralph laughed, at the same time forcibly restraining his son from leaping into the fray on the side of down-trodden mankind.

Elizabeth sat beyond Jon-Jon, with Robert on her lap. The child's sickly face was solemn and he sucked dedicatedly upon his thumb like an elderly gnome upon his pipe. In contrast, Elizabeth was radiant with a childlike joy, her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining, as she egged Judy on to further excesses.

A shining lock of her hair had come loose from the tortoiseshell comb and lay against the tender velvety skin of her temple, half curled around the lobe of her ear. Her ear was a faint Pink, and so thin and delicately shaped that the sunlight showed through it as though it were made from some rare bone-china. The same sunlight made the burgundy sparks flare like electricity in her thick dark tresses.

It drew Ralph's attention from the marionettes, and he watched her covertly over Jonathan's curly head. Her laughter was a throaty purr, natural and unashamed, and Ralph laughed again in sympathy. She turned her head and for a moment Ralph looked deeply into her eyes. It was like looking into a bowl of hot honey. He seemed to be able to see into limitless depths that were flecked with gold. Then Elizabeth dropped the veil of dark curved lashes over them, and looked back at the tiny stage, but she was no longer laughing. Instead her lower lip trembled and a dark flush of blood washed up her throat.

Feeling strangely guilty and shaken, Ralph quickly fastened his own eyes, if not his attention, on the squawking, battling marionettes.

The sketch ended, to Jonathan's vast satisfaction, with Judy being led away to some nameless but richly deserved fate by a policeman in Mr. Peel's blue helmet, and the mild bespectacled little bookkeeper of Meikles Store came out from behind his candy-striped screen with the glove puppets still upon his hands, to take his bows.

"He looks just like Mr. Kipling," Elizabeth whispered, "and he has the same bloodthirsty and violent imagination." Ralph felt a rush of gratitude towards her that she should gloss over that unexpected moment of awkwardness so gracefully. He picked up the boys, sat one upon each shoulder, and they followed the dispersing audience across the laager.

Upon his father's shoulder, Jonathan chattered like a flock of starlings, explaining to Bobby the finer points of the play which were clearly too subtle for any lesser intelligence than his own to follow.

However, both Ralph and Elizabeth walked in silence.

When they reached the wagon, Ralph slid both children to the ground and they scampered away. Halfheartedly, Elizabeth made to follow them, but stopped and turned back to him when Ralph spoke.

"I don't know what I would have done without you you've been wonderfully kind-" He hesitated. "Without Cathy-" He saw the pain in her eyes and broke off. "I just wanted to thank you." "You don't have to do that, Ralph," she answered quietly. "Anything you need I'll always be here to help." Then her reserve cracked, she started to speak again, but her lips trembled and she turned away sharply and followed the two boys into the wagon.

Ralph had paid siege prices for the bottle of whisky by scrawling a cheque on the label from a bully beef tin for 20 pounds. He took it hidden under his coat to where Isazi and Jan Cheroot and Sergeant Ezra sat together beside a fire away from their men.

They swilled. the coffee grounds out of their enamel mugs and proffered them for a good dram of the whisky and sipped in silence for a while, all of them staring into the camp-fire flames, letting the warmth of the spirit spread out through their bodies.

At last Ralph nodded at Sergeant Ezra, and the big Matabele began to speak quietly.

"Gandang and his Inyati impi are still waiting in the Khami Hills he has twelve hundred men. They are all blooded warriors, Babiaan is bivouacked below the Hills of the Indunas with six hundred. He could be here in an hour-" Quickly Ezra recounted the positions of the imp is the names of their indunas, and the mood and mettle of their warriors.

"What of Bazo and his Moles?" At last Ralph asked the question that concerned him most, and Ezra shrugged.

"We do not have word of them. I have my best men in the hills, searching for them. Nobody knows where the Moles have gone." "Where will we strike next?" Ralph asked the question rhetorically, musing as he stared in the fire. "Will it be at Babiaan in the Hills of the Indunas, or Zama with his thousand lying across the Mangiwe Road?"

Isazi coughed in polite disagreement, and when Ralph glanced up at him, he said, "Last night I sat at one of Babiaan's camp-fires, eating his meat, and listening to his men talk. They spoke of our attack upon the camp of the horses, and how the indunas had warned them in future to be on their guard against all strangers, even though they wore the furs and feathers of the fighting imp is We will not work the same trick twice." Jan Cheroot and Ezra grunted in agreement, and the little Hottentot inverted his mug to prove it empty, and glanced significantly at the bottle between Ralph's feet. Ralph poured again, and as he cupped the mug in his hands and inhaled the pungent perfume of the spirit, his mind went back to that afternoon to the laughter of the children and a lovely young girl whose hair burned with soft fires in the sunlight.

His voice was rough and ugly. "Their women and children, he said.

"They will be hidden in the caves and the secret valleys of the Matopos. Find them!" There were five small boys under the bank of the stream. They were all stark naked, and their legs were coated to above the knees with slick yellow clay. They laughed and squabbled good-naturedly as they dug the clay out of the bank with sharpened sticks and packed it into crudely woven reed baskets.

Tungata Zebiwe, "The Seeker after what has been Stolen', was the first to climb out of the stream, lugging the heavy basket to a shady place where he squatted and set to work. The others straggled up the bank after him and seated themselves in a circle.

Tungata took a handful of clay from his basket and rolled it into a thick soft sausage between his pink palms. Then he moulded it with practised skill, forming the humped back and sturdy legs. When it was complete, he set the body carefully between his knees on a slab of dried bark, then turned his attention to sculpting the head separately with curved red devil thorns for the horns and chips of water worn rock-crystal for the eyes. He attached the head to the thick neck, sticking out his tongue with concentration as he adjusted it to a proud angle, and then he sat back and studied it with a critical eye.

"Inkunzi Nkulu!"he hailed his creation. "Great Bull!" Grinning with delight, he carried the clay beast to the ant heap and set it on its bark base to dry in the sun. Then he hurried back to begin making the cows and calves for his herd. As he worked, he mocked the creations of the other boys, comparing them to his own great herd bull, and grinning cheekily at their retorts.

Tanase watched him from the shadows. She had come silently down the path through the thick riverine bush, led on by the tinkling of child-laughter, and the happy banter. Now she was reluctant to interrupt this magical moment.

In the sadness and striving, in the menace and smoke of war, it seemed that all joy and laughter had been forgotten. It needed the resilience and vision of a child to remind her of what had once been and what might be again. She felt a suffocating weight of love overwhelm her, followed almost immediately by a formless dread. She wanted to rush to the child and take him in her arms, to hold him tightly to her bosom and protect him from she was not sure what.

Then Tungata. looked up and saw her, and came to her carrying the clay bull with shy pride.

"See what I have made." "It is beautiful." "It is for you, Umame, I made it for you." Tanase took the offering. "He is a fine bull, and he will breed many calves, she said, and her love was so strong that the tears scalded her eyelids. She did not want the child to see it.

"Wash the clay off your legs and arms," she told him. "We must go up to the cave." He skipped beside her on the path, his body still wet from the river, his skin glistening with a velvety black sheen, laughing delightedly when Tanase set the clay bull upon her head, walking straight-backed and hips swinging, to balance the load.

They came up the path to the base of the cliff. It was not truly a cave, but a long low overhang of the cliff face. They were not the first to use it as a home. The rocky roof was blackened with the soot of innumerable cooking-fires, and the back wall was decorated with the ancient paintings and engravings of the little yellow Bushmen who had hunted here long before Mzilikazi led his imp is into these hills. They were wonderful pictures of rhinoceros and giraffe and gazelle, and of the little stick figures, armed with bows and outsized genitalia, who hunted them.

There were almost five hundred persons living in this place, one of the secret safe places of the tribe, where the women and the children were sent when war or some other catastrophe threatened the Matabele. Though the valley was steep and narrow, there were five escape routes, hidden paths scaling the cliffs or narrow clefts through the granite, which made it impossible for an enemy to trap them in the gut of the valley.

The stream provided fresh clear water for drinking, thirty milk cows that had survived the rinderpest provided mass, the soured milk which was one of the tribe's staples. And when they marched in, every woman had borne upon her head a leather grain-bag. The locusts had depleted the harvest, but with careful planning they could exist here for many months.

The women were spread out down the length of the rock shelter, busy with their separate tasks. Some of them were stamping the corn in mortars carved from a dried tree-trunk, using a heavy wooden pestle that they swung up with both hands above their head and then let drop of its own weight into the cup of the mortar, clapping their hands and then seizing the club to lift it for the next stroke. Others were plaiting bark cloth for sleeping-mats, or tanning wild animals" skins, or stringing ceramic beads. Over it all hung the faint blue mist of the cooking-fires, and the sweet hum of women's voices, interspersed with the gurgling and chirping of black babes who crawled naked on the rocky floor, or hung like fat limpets from their mothers" breasts.

Juba was at the far end of the shelter, imparting to two of her daughters and the new wife of one of her middle sons the delicate secrets of beer-brewing. The sorghum grain had been soaked and had germinated, now came the drying and grinding of the yeast. It was an absorbing task, and Juba did not become aware of the presence of her senior daughterin-law and her eldest grandson until they stood over her. Then she looked up, and her smile split the great round of her face. "my mother" Tanase knelt before her respectfully. "I must speak with you." Juba struggled to rise, but was pinned by her own vast weight. Her daughters took an elbow each and heaved her upright. Once she was on her feet, she moved with surprising agility, swept Tungata onto her hip and carried him easily along the pathway. Tanase fell in beside her.

"Bazo has sent for me," Tanase told her. "There is dissension amongst the indunas, Bazo needs the words of the Umlimo made clear.

Without that the struggle will fall into vacillation and talk. We will lose all that we have won so dearly." "Then you must go, my child." "I must go swiftly, I cannot take Tungata with me." "He is safe here, I will look after him. When do you leave?" "Immediately." Juba sighed and nodded. "So be it." Tanase touched the child's cheek.

"Obey your grandmother," she said softly, and like a shadow was gone around the bend of the narrow pathway.

Tanase passed through the granite portals that guarded the valley of the Umlimo. She had only her memories of this place for travelling companions, and they were not good company. Yet when she went down the path, she walked straight, with a kind of antelope grace, her long limbs swinging freely and her head held high on the long heron's neck.

As soon as she entered the little cluster of huts in the bottom of the valley, her trained senses were immediately aware of the tensions and angers that hung over the place like a sickly miasma over a fever swamp. She could feel the anger and frustration in Bazo when she knelt before him, and made her dutiful obeisance. She knew so well what those knots of tense muscle at the points of his clenched jaw and the reddish glaze in his eyes meant.

Before she rose, she had noted how the indunas had drawn into two separate groups. On one side the elders, and facing them the young and headstrong were ranged about Bazo. She crossed the space between them and knelt before Gandang and his white-headed brothers, Somabula and Babiaan.

"I see you, my child." Gravely Gandang acknowledged her greeting, and then the abruptness with which he broached the real reason for her summons warned Tanase of its dire import.

"We wish you to speak to us on the meaning of the Umlimo's latest prophecy." "My lord and father, I am no longer an intimate of the mysteries.-" Impatiently Gandang brushed aside her disclaimer. "You understand more than anyone outside that dreadful cave. Listen to the words of the Umlimo, and discourse faithfully upon them." She bowed her head in acquiescence, but at the same time turned slightly so that she had Bazo at the very edge of her vision.

"The Umlimo spake thus. "Only a foolish hunter blocks the opening of the cave from which the wounded leopard seeks to escape."" Gandang repeated the prophecy, and his brothers nodded at the accuracy of his rendition. "Veiling her eyes behind thick black lashes, Tanase turned her head the breadth of a finger. Now she could see Bazo's right hand as it rested on his bare thigh. She had taught him the rudiments of. the secret sign language of the initiates. His forefinger curled and touched the first joint of his thumb. It was a command.

"Remain silent!"" said that gesture. "Speak not!" She made the signal of comprehension and acknowledgement, with the hand that hung at her side. Then she raised her head.

"Was that all, Lord?"she asked of Gandang. ""There is more," he answered. "The Umlimo spake a second time.

"The hot wind from the north will scorch the weeds in the fields, before the new corn can be planted. Wait for the north wind."" All the indunas leaned forward eagerly, and Gandang told her, "Speak to us of the meaning." "The meaning of the Umlimo's words is never clear at once. I must ponder on it." "When will you tell us?" "When I have an answer." "Tomorrow morning?"Gandang insisted. "Perhaps." Then you will spend the night alone, that your meditation be not disturbed," Gandang ordered.

"My husband,"Tanase demurred.

"Alone," Gandang repeated sharply. "With a guard on the door of your hut." The guard that was set upon her hut was a young warrior, not yet married, and because of it he was that much more susceptible to the wiles of a beautiful woman. When he brought the bowl of food to Tanase, she smiled in such a way that he lingered at the door of the hut. When she offered him a choice morsel, he glanced outside guiltily and then came to take it from her hand.

The food had a strange bitter taste, but he did not want to give offence, so he swallowed it manfully. The woman's smile promised things that the young warrior could barely believe possible, but when he tried to answer her provocative sallies, his voice slurred strangely in his own ears, and he was overcome with a lassitude such that he had to close his eyes for a moment.

Tanase replaced the stopper on the buck horn bottle she had concealed in her palm, and stepped quietly over the guard's sleeping form. When she whistled, Bazo came swiftly and silently to where she waited by the stream.

"Tell me, Lord," she whispered, "that which you require of me."

When she returned to the hut, the guard still slept deeply. She propped him in the doorway with his weapon across his lap. In the morning his head would ache, but he would not be eager to tell the indunas how he had spent the night.

"I have thought deeply on the words of the Umlimo," Tanase knelt before the indunas, "and I read meaning into the parable of the foolish hunter who hesitates in the entrance of the cave." Gandang frowned as he guessed the slant of her reply, but she went on calmly.

"Would not the brave and skilled hunter go boldly into the cave where the animal lurks, and slay it?" One of the elder indunas hissed with disagreement, and sprang to his feet.

"I say that the Umlimo has warned us to leave the road to the south open, so that the white men with all their women and chattels may leave this land for ever," he shouted, and immediately Bazo was on his feet facing him.

"The white men will never leave. The only way to rid ourselves of them is to bury them." There was a roar of approval from the younger indunas grouped around Bazo, but he lifted his hand to silence them.

"If you leave the south road open, it will certainly be used by the soldiers who march up it with their little three legged guns." There were angry cries of denial and encouragement.

"I say to you that we are the hot wind from the north, that the Umlimo prophesied, we are the ones who will scorch the weeds-" The shouts that drowned him out showed just how deeply the nation's leaders were divided, and Tanase felt the blackness of despair come down upon her. Gandang rose to his feet, and such was the weight of tradition and custom that even the wildest and fiercest of the young indunas fell silent.

"We must give the white men a chance to leave with their women.

We will leave the road open for them to go, and we will wait in patience for the hot wind, the miraculous wind from the north that the Umlimo promises to blow our enemies away.-" Bazo alone had not squatted respectfully to the senior and una and now he did something that was without precedent. He interrupted his father, and his voice was full of scorn.

"You have given them chance enough," said Bazo. "You have let the woman from Khami and all her brats go free. I ask you one question, my father, is what you propose kindness or is it cowardice?" They gasped, for when a son could speak thus to his father, then the world that once they all had known and understood was now changed. Gandang looked at Bazo across the small space that separated them, which was a gulf neither of them would ever be able once again to bridge. Though he was still tall and erect, there was such sorrow in Gandang's eyes that made him seem as old as the granite hills that surrounded them.

"You are no longer my son," he said simply.

"And you are no longer my father," Bazo said, and turning on his heel, strode from the hut. First Tanase, and then, one after another, the young indunas stood up and followed Bazo out into the sunlight. n outrider came in at full gallop and brought his horse up so sharply that it reared and sawed its head Against the bit.

"Sir, there is large party of rebels coming up the road ahead," he shouted urgently.

"Very well, trooper." The Honourable Maurice Gifford, officer commanding troops B and D of the Bulawayo field force, touched the brim of his slouch hat with a gloved hand in acknowledgement. "Go forward and keep them under observation." Then he turned in the saddle.

"Captain Dawson, we will put the wagons into laager under those trees, there will be a good field of fire for the Maxim from there I will take out fifty mounted men to engage the enemy." It really was a piece of astonishing good luck to run into a group of rebels so close to Bulawayo. After weeks of scouring the countryside, Gifford and his 160 troopers had managed to gather in thirty or so survivors from the isolated villages and trading-posts, but so far they had not had even a chance of a scrap with the Matabele. Leaving Dawson to prepare the laager, Gifford spurred down the Bulawayo road at the head of fifty of his best men.

Gifford was the youngest son of an earl, a handsome young aristocrat and junior officer in a famous guards regiment. He had been spending his leave on a spot of shooting in Africa, and had been fortunate enough to have his holiday enlivened by a native uprising.

The general opinion of the Honourable M. Gifford was that he was frightfully keen, and a damned fine young fellow, bound to go a long way.

He reined in his horse at the crest of the rise, and held up his gloved right hand to halt the troop.

"There they are, sir," cried the outrider. "Bold as brass." The Honourable Maurice Gifford polished the lenses of his binoculars on the tail of his yellow silk scarf, and then held the glasses to his eyes.

"They are all mounted," he said, "and jolly well mounted at that," he murmured. "But, I say, what a murderous-looking bunch of ruffians."

The approaching horsemen were half a mile away, a straggling mob, dressed in war kilts and headdresses, armed with a weird assortment of modern and primitive weapons.

"Troop, into extended order, left and right wheel," Gifford ordered. "Sergeant, we will use the slope to charge them, and then disengage and attempt to draw them within range of the Maxim."

"Begging your pardon, sir," the sergeant mumbled, "but isn't that a white man leading them?" Gifford lifted the binoculars and peered through them again. "The devil it is!" he muttered. "But the fellow is dressed in furs and things." The fellow gave him a cheery wave, as he rode up at the head of his motley gang.

"Morning, you aren't Maurice Gifford by any chance?" "I am sir," Gifford replied frostily. "And who are you, if I may be so bold as to ask?" "The name's Ballantyne, Ralph Ballantyne." The fellow gave him an engaging grin. "And these gentlemen," with his thumb he indicated those who followed him, "are Ballantyne's Scouts." Maurice Gifford looked them over with distaste. It was impossible to tell their racial origins, for they were all painted with fat and clay to look like Matabele, and they wore cast-offs and tribal dress. Only this fellow Ballantyne had left his face its natural colour, probably to identify himself to the Bulawayo field force, but it was equally probable that he would blacken it as soon as he had what he wanted from them. He was not shy about making his wants known, either.

"A requisition, Mr. Gifford," he said, and handed over a folded and sealed note from his belt pouch.

Gifford bit on the finger of his glove, and drew it off his right hand, before he accepted the note and broke the seal.

"I cannot let you have my Maxim, sit," he exclaimed as he read.

"I have a duty to protect the civilians in my care.

"You are only four miles from the laager at Bulawayo and the road is clear of Matabele. We have just swept it for you. There is no longer any danger to your people." "But,-" said Gifford.

"The requisition is signed by Colonel William Napier, officer commanding the Bulawayo field force. I suggest you take the matter up with him, when you reach Bulawayo." Ralph was still smiling. "In the meantime, we are rather pressed for time. We will just relieve you of the Maxim, and trouble you no further." Gifford crumpled the note, and glared impotently at Ralph, then shifted his ground.

"You and your men appear to be wearing enemy uniform," he accused.

"That is in contravention of the articles of war, sir. "Read the articles to the indunas, Mr. Gifford, particularly those dealing with the murder and torture of noncombatants." "There is no call for an Englishman to descend to the level of the savages he is fighting," said Gifford loftily. "I have had the honour to meet your father, Major Zouga Ballantyne. He is a gentleman. I wonder what he would say about your conduct." "My father and his fellow conspirators, all of them English gentlemen, are presently standing trial on charges of having waged war against a friendly government. However, I will certainly solicit his opinion of my conduct at the first available opportunity.

Now if you will send your sergeant, back with us to hand over the Maxim, I will bid you good day, Mr. Gifford." They unloaded the Maxim from its cart, removed the tripod and ammunition boxes, and loaded them onto three pack-horses.

"How did you get Napier to sign away one of his precious Maxims?"

Harry Mellow demanded, as he clinched the straps on the pack-saddles.

"Sleight of hand," Ralph winked at him. "The pen is mightier-" "You forged the requisition," Harry stared at him. "They'll shoot you." "They'll have to catch me first." Ralph turned and bellowed to his Scouts, "Troop, mount! Walk march, forward!" There was no doubt that he was a wizard. A wizened little fellow, not much taller than Tungata or any "of his companions, but he was painted in the most marvelous colours, zigzags of crimson and white and black across his face and chest.

When he first appeared out of the bush beside the stream in the secret valley, the children were frozen with terror. But before they could recover their wits sufficiently to run, the little painted wizard uttered such a string of cries and grunts, imitating horse and eagle and chacma baboon, at the same time prancing and flapping and scratching, that their terror turned to fascination.

Then from the sack over his shoulder, the wizard dug out a huge lump of rock sugar candy. He sucked it noisily, and the children who had not tasted sugar in weeks drew closer and watched him with glistening dark eyes. He proffered the lump of sugar to Tungata who edged forward, snatched it and scampered back. The little wizard laughed in such an infectious manner, that the other children laughed with him and swarmed forward to grab at the fresh lumps of candy he offered. Surrounded by laughing, clapping children, the little wizard climbed the path up the side of the valley to the rock shelter.

The women, lulled and reassured by the sounds of happy children, came to crowd about the little wizard, to stare and giggle, and the boldest to ask him. "Who are you?" "Where do you come from?" "What is in the sack?" In reply to the last question, the wizard drew out a handful of coloured ribbons, and the younger women shrieked with feminine vanity and tied them at their wrists and throats.

"I bring gifts and happy tidings," the wizard cackled. "Look what I bring you." There were steel combs, and small round mirrors, a little box that played sweet tinkling music they crowded about him, utterly enchanted. "Gifts and happy tidings," sang the wizard.

"Tell us! Tell us!" they chanted.

"The spirits of our forefathers have come to aid us. They have sent a divine wind to eat up the white men, as the rinderpest ate up the cattle. All the white men are de adV "The amakiwa are de adV "They have left behind them all these wonderful gifts. The town of Bulawayo is empty of white men, but these things are there for all to take. As much as you will but hurry, all the men and women of the Matabele are going there. There will be nothing left for those who come after.

Look, look at these beautiful pieces of cloth, there are thousands of them. Who wants these pretty buttons, these sharp knives? Those who want them must follow me!" sang the wizard. "For the fighting is over!

The white men are dead! The Matabele have triumphed, who wants to follow me?" "Lead us, little Father," they begged him. "We will follow you.

Still digging out gewgaws and trifles from the sack, the painted wizard started down towards the end of the narrow valley, and the women snatched up their little ones, strapped them to their backs with strips of cloth, called to the older children and hurried after the wizard.

"Follow me, people of MashobaneV he chirped. "Your time of greatness has come. The prophecy of the Umlimo is fulfilled. The divine wind from the north has blown the amakiwa away." Tungata, almost hysterical with excitement and dread that he would be left behind, hurried down the length of the rock shelter, until he saw the huge beloved figure squatting against the back wall of rock.

"Grandmother," he squeaked. "The wizard has pretty things for us all. We must hurry!" OVer the millennia the stream had cut a narrow twisted exit from the bowel of the valley, with high cliffs on each side. The granite was painted with rich orange and yellow lichens.

Compressed into this chasm the stream fell in smoking cascades of white water, before debouching into a shallower wider valley in the lower foothills.

The valley was filled with fine grass, the colour of a ripening wheat field. The pathway clung to the edge of the chasm, with a perilous drop to foaming white water on one hand and with the cliff rising sheer on the other. Then the gradient became more gentle and the path emerged into the quiet valley below. Rainwater had scarred the side of the lower valley with deep don gas natural entrenchments, and one of these afforded an ideal emplacement for the Maxim.