Page:Under the Sun.djvu/162

138 but for mile after mile the low hoot, hoot, of the thing that was following, sounded so close at hand that I kept on looking round. Shumari, like all savages — they approach animals very nearly in this — was intensely susceptible to the superstitious and uncanny, and long before the ghostliness of the persistent voice occurred to me, I had noticed that Shumari was keeping as close to me as possible. But at last, whether it was from constantly turning my head over my shoulder to see what was coming after us, or whether I was unconsciously infected by his nervousness, I got as fidgety as he, and, for the sake of human company, opened conversation.

“What bird makes that noise?” I asked.

Shumari did not reply, and I repeated the question. And then in a voice, so absurd from its assumption of boldness that I laughed outright, he said, —

“No bird, master. It is a muzimu [spirit] that is following us. Let us go quicker.”

Here was a position! We had all the evening been hunting nothing, and now we were being hunted by nothing! The memory of Shumari’s voice made me laugh again, and just then catching sight of the twinkling camp fires in the far distance, I laughed at myself too. And, on a sudden, just as my laugh ceased, there came from the rattan brake past which we were riding a sound that was, and yet was not, the echo of my laugh. It sounded something like my laugh, but it was repeated twice, and the creature I rode, ass though it was, turned its head towards the brake. Shumari meanwhile had seen the camp fires, and his terror overpowering discipline, he gave one howl of horror and fled, his ass, seeing the fires too, falling into the humor