“And what stand would you and your people have made against the wild men but for Ngonyama?  What will they do when Hassan comes again, if the great one is not at hand to help?”

“Ohe!  Little chief,” she laughed, “you cannot frighten me with tales of Hassan; and think well over my word.”

She went away down towards the new village that had been built beyond the river, and her voice rose in a chant as she went—­a chant that was taken up and thrown back by the women returning home from the gardens.  Compton built up the fire, and then walked up to the mouth of the gorge, restless and consumed with anxiety.  Those words of the woman, “maybe they will not return,” haunted him.  They seemed to him ominous of danger.  All night he patrolled up and down the ledge, between the cave and the gorge, fearing they would not come, and yet expecting to hear their voices at any moment; and in the morning he was heavy-eyed from want of sleep.  The night-guards from the gorge trotted by, their places having been relieved.

“Have ye seen Ngonyama and the Spider?”

“There is smoke,” they said.  “Maybe the white chiefs make the fire.”

“Where?”

“Beyond the water that is taboo.”

He hurried off with his glasses, and from the gorge saw smoke rising far down the forest; and the sight gave him hope, for it might mean that his friends had followed the river down from Deadman’s Pool on the trail of the missing boat.  Bidding the men keep a good watch, and report any new development to him at once, he went back to the eave to breakfast and to renewed study of the journal.  As he read, his attention became riveted on a series of sketches which laid bare the subterranean passages under the south-west portion of the cliff, between the gorge and the canon giving outlet to the river.  As he read, too absorbed to think of anything else, he came upon the following note:—­

“If it chance that understanding eye should fall on these notes, let my directions be carefully observed.  No stranger—­certainly no white man—­would be permitted to leave the valley once he discovered its existence, by setting foot within its encircling cliffs.  Let him not try to escape by the gorge on the south, for though apparently undefended, it is really guarded by a band of women who have the right to kill any person—­not taboo—­who passes through.  These women, victims of a dark and degrading superstition, are recruited from the village, and once they quit the valley they are never seen, for they live about the shores of the pool beneath the cliff and in caverns adjoining, which form the lower or basement rooms of a series of stupendous vaults produced by volcanic agency.  By night they prowl about the slopes above the pool; by day, some of them keep watch over the passage through the gorge and through the canon from loopholes to which they have access from the lower vaults.  I know, because I myself tried to escape by this passage,