She looked about her to take her bearings in case it should ever be
necessary for her to return to the entrance of the cave. This proved
easy, for a hundred or so feet above her--where the sheer face of the
cliff jutted out a little, at that very spot indeed on which tradition
said that the body of the Senora da Ferreira had struck in its fall, and
the necklace Benita wore to-day was torn from her--a stunted mimosa grew
in some cleft of the rock. To mark the crocodile run itself she bent
down a bunch of reeds, and having first lit a few Tandstickor brimstone
matches and thrown them about inside of it, that the smell of them might
scare the beast should it wish to return, she set her lantern behind a
stone near to the mouth of the hole.
Then Benita began her journey which, when the river was high, it would
not have been possible for her to make except by swimming. As it was,
a margin of marsh was left between her and the steep, rocky side of the
mount from which the great wall rose, and through this she made her way.
Never was she likely to forget that walk. The tall reeds dripped
their dew upon her until she was soaked; long, black-tailed
finches--saccaboolas the natives call them--flew up undisturbed, and
lobbed away across the river; owls flitted past and bitterns boomed at
the coming of the dawn.
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