From the heart of it, too, came howlings of ghosts and wolves, that were answered by howls from the rocks above--hearken, Umslopogaas, such howlings as we hear to-night! "It was awful here in the mouth of the cave, for I had not yet learned the secret of the stone, and if I had known it, should I have dared to close it, leaving myself alone with the dead wolves and him whom the wolves had struggled to tear down?
I walked out yonder on to the platform and looked up.

The moon shone full upon the face of the stone Witch who sits aloft forever.

She seemed to grin at me, and, oh! I grew afraid, for now I knew that this was a place of dead men, a place where spirits perch like vultures in a tree, as they sweep round and round the world.

I went back to the cave, and feeling that I must do something lest I should go mad, I drew to me the carcase of the great dog-wolf which I had killed, and, taking my knife of iron, I began to skin it by the light of the moon.

For an hour or more I skinned, singing to myself as I worked, and striving to forget him who sat in the cleft above and the howlings which ran about the mountains.