Air Stories — page 42: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AIR STORIES before, but she had not taken him seriously. ‘Getting bored with me, Daddy ? ’”’ she asked with a smile. Grant became grave of face as he drew her towards him. ‘‘ It’s not that, Judy, as you know very well. The... the fact is that this place is not suitable for a woman. I thought otherwise a while ago, but I find I was wrong.’’ Judy stood back to look searchingly up at her father’s face. From the tone of his voice, it was clear that he was gravely disturbed about something. ‘‘In what way isn’t it suitable, Daddy ? ’’ she asked quietly. ‘* There may be a little trouble with the natives,’’ Grant said, after a short pause. ‘‘Of course, there probably won't be, but there are signs of trouble, and I would rather you didn’t go out of sight of the compound.’’ Somewhat to Grant’s surprise, his daughter agreed to this limitation without further question. The fact was that Judy already had a considerably greater knowledge of the history of Towonga and the habits of its people than her father imagined. Ever since his appoint- ment, and while she was still at school, she had collected and read every book she could find that dealt with the country. She knew of Afali the Terrible, and of Kalunda, the flat-topped mountain of sacrifice. She had known of these things before ever she set foot in the country, and indeed she had written of them in great detail to a former school-friend on the eve of her departure. But she said nothing of her towledge to her father, and when tea was finished she left the bungalow and passed out through the log-fence which surrounded the compound to climb a short distance up the rising ground beyond. Half- way up she stopped to look back. From here she could see over the top of the bungalow at the towering wall of Kalunda beyond the gorge. By merely raising her eyes she could scan the whole frontage of the mountain, on which was scarcely foothold even for a bird. At the summit, its outline stood sharply defined against the sky, and there, almost then, 40 opposite her, was a crag that jutted out over the chasm. It was flat-topped, and Sergeant Umtata had told her that it was from there that men, and women too, had been thrown in the old days of human sacrifice. Judy shivered a little as she gazed, and then she screamed. But the sound was muffled by some- thing that had come down over her head, and which shut out all light ; something which smelt vilely. She strug- gled to escape it, but her arms were pinioned and she was lifted from the ground. She continued to struggle for a while, and then relaxed, half suffocated, semi-conscious. CHAPTER Il Afali, the Terrible CROSS the gorge, opposite Grant’s bungalow, the mountain slopes were heavily wooded. Overhead the trees united to form an unbroken roof which shut out the day, so that no man who lacked the sixth sense of the bushman could hope to find his way. The natives of Towonga, it seemed, possessed this sixth sense, for on that same evening many of them might have been seen in this dense jungle. They moved silently, and their course was always upwards. They were naked, except for belts of jungle grass about their waists, and though they stooped low, they maintained a swinging trot. In his right hand each man carried a spear. Around the summit of the mountain there was a great and growing concourse of the tribes, and as the sun neared the horizon this army formed itself in the shape of a crescent moon. Standing apart from the rest was a tall, thin man of repulsive and filthy appearance. His face was partly covered by greasy black hair which hung in matted strands beneath his horned head-dress. On either side of him stood his bodyguard of half a dozen stalwart natives, motionless and with their spears at arm’s length before them. The man they guarded was Afali, Co DOO)