Slipping through the hole in the tree, Nanea walked quietly towards the cannibals—­not knowing in the least what she should do when she reached them.  As she arrived in line with the fire this lack of programme came home to her mind forcibly, and she paused to reflect.  Just then one of the cannibals looked up to see a tall and stately figure wrapped in a white garment which, as the flame-light flickered on it, seemed now to advance from the dense background of shadow, and now to recede into it.  The poor savage wretch was holding a stone knife in his teeth when he beheld her, but it did not remain there long, for opening his great jaws he uttered the most terrified and piercing yell that Nanea had ever heard.  Then the others saw her also, and presently the forest was ringing with shrieks of fear.  For a few seconds the outcasts stood and gazed, then they were gone this way and that, bursting their path through the undergrowth like startled jackals.  The Esemkofu of Zulu tradition had been routed in their own haunted home by what they took to be a spirit.

Poor Esemkofu! they were but miserable and starving bushmen who, driven into that place of ill omen many years ago, had adopted this means, the only one open to them, to keep the life in their wretched bodies.  Here at least they were unmolested, and as there was little other food to be found amid that wilderness of trees, they took what the river brought them.  When executions were few in the Pool of Doom, times were hard for them indeed—­for then they were driven to eat each other.  That is why there were no children.

As their inarticulate outcry died away in the distance, Nanea ran forward to look at the body that lay on the ground, and staggered back with a sigh of relief.  It was not Nahoon, but she recognised the face for that of one of the party of executioners.  How did he come here?  Had Nahoon killed him?  Had Nahoon escaped?  She could not tell, and at the best it was improbable, but still the sight of this dead soldier lit her heart with a faint ray of hope, for how did he come to be dead if Nahoon had no hand in his death?  She could not bear to leave him lying so near her hiding-place, however; therefore, with no small toil, she rolled the corpse back into the water, which carried it swiftly away.  Then she returned to the tree, having first replenished the fire, and awaited the light.

At last it came—­so much of it as ever penetrated this darksome den—­and Nanea, becoming aware that she was hungry, descended from the tree to search for food.  All day long she searched, finding nothing, till towards sunset she remembered that on the outskirts of the forest there was a flat rock where it was the custom of those who had been in any way afflicted, or who considered themselves or their belongings to be bewitched, to place propitiatory offerings of food wherewith the Esemkofu and Amalhosi were supposed to satisfy their spiritual cravings.