The echo came sometimes, as it were, from stark rock, and sometimes from the deep gloom of the forests.

I have never heard an eerier sound.

Neither natural nor human it seemed, but the voice of that world between which is hid from man's sight and hearing.
Mr Wardlaw clutched my arm, and in that moment I guessed the explanation.

The native drums were beating, passing some message from the far north down the line of the Berg, where the locations were thickest, to the great black population of the south.
'But that means war,' Mr Wardlaw cried.
'It means nothing of the kind,' I said shortly.

'It's their way of sending news.