Then there was a scene, a last scene, which remained fixed in her mind after everything else had faded away. She saw the huge trunks of forest trees, enormous, towering trees, gloomy trees beneath which the darkness could be felt. Down their avenues shot the level arrows of the dawn. They fell on her, Rachel, dressed in robes of white skin, turning her long, outspread hair to gold. They fell upon little people with faces of a dusky pallor, one of them crouched against the bole of a tree, a wizened monkey of a man who in all that vastness looked small. They fell upon another man, white-skinned, half-naked, with a yellow beard, who was lashed by hide ropes to a second tree. It was Richard Darrien grown older, and at his feet lay a broad-bladed spear!
The vision left her, or she was awakened from her sleep, whichever it might be, by the pleasant voice of this same Richard, who stood yawning before her, and said: "It is time to get up. I say, why do you look so queer? Are you ill?"
"I have been up, long ago," she answered, struggling to her feet. "What do you mean?"
"Nothing, except that you seemed a ghost a minute ago. Now you are a girl again, it must have been the light."
"Did I? Well, I dreamed of ghosts, or something of the sort," and she told him of the vision of the trees, though of the rest she could remember little.
"That's a queer story," he said when she had finished. "I wish you had got to the end of it, I should like to know what happened."
"We shall find out one day," she answered solemnly.
"Do you mean to say that you believe it is true, Rachel?"
"Yes, Richard, one day I shall see you tied to that tree."
"Then I hope you will cut me loose, that is all. What a funny girl you are," he added doubtfully. "I know what it is, you want something to eat. Have the rest of that biltong."
"No," she answered. "I could not touch it. There is a pool of water out there, go and bathe your arm, and I will bind it up again."
He went, still wondering, and a few minutes later returned, his face and head dripping, and whispered: "Give me the gun. There is a reed buck standing close by. I saw it through the mist; we'll have a jolly breakfast off him."
She handed him the roer, and crept after him out of the cave. About thirty yards away to the right, looming very large through the dense fog, stood the fat reed buck. Richard wriggled towards it, for he wanted to make sure of his shot, while Rachel crouched behind a stone. The buck becoming alarmed, turned its head, and began to sniff at the air, whereon he lifted the gun and just as it was about to spring away, aimed and fired. Down it went dead, whereon, rejoicing in his triumph like any other young hunter who thinks not of the wonderful and happy life that he has destroyed, Richard sprang upon it exultantly, drawing his knife as he came, while Rachel, who always shrank from such sights, retreated to the cave. Half an hour later, however, being healthy and hungry, she had no objection to eating venison toasted upon sticks in the red embers of their fire.