Act 2 was that, capering like a brute of a Zulu executioner, I retired from my victim and hid myself in a bush on the edge of the plateau at a distance of forty yards.  After this there was a pause.  The place was intensely bright with sunshine and intensely silent; as silent as the skeletons of the murdered men about me; as silent as Hans, who lay there looking so very small and dead in that big theatre where no grass grew.  It was an eerie wait in such surroundings, but at length the curtain rang up for Act 3.

In the infinite arch of blue above me I perceived a speck, no larger than a mote of dust.  The aasvogel on watch up there far out of the range of man’s vision had seen the deed, and, by sinking downwards, signalled it to his companions that were quartering the sky for fifty miles round; for these birds prey by sight, not by smell.  Down he came and down, and long before he had reached the neighbourhood of earth other specks appeared in the distant blue.  Now he was not more than four or five hundred yards above me, and began to wheel, floating round the place upon his wide wings, and sinking as he wheeled.  So he sank softly and slowly until he was about a hundred and fifty feet above Hans.  Then suddenly he paused, hung quite steady for a few seconds, shut his wings and fell like a bolt, only opening them again just before he reached the earth.

Here he settled, tilting forward in that odd way which vultures have, and scrambling a few awkward paces until he gained his balance.  Then he froze into immobility, gazing with in awful, stony glare at the prostrate Hans, who lay within about fifteen feet of him.  Scarcely was this aasvogel down, when others, summoned from the depths of sky, did as he had done.  They appeared, they sank, they wheeled, always from east to west, the way the sun travels.  They hovered for a few seconds, then fell like stones, pitched on to their beaks, recovered themselves, waddled forward into line, and sat gazing at Hans.  Soon there was a great ring of them about him, all immovable, all gazing, all waiting for something.

Presently that something appeared in the shape of an aasvogel which was nearly twice as big as any of the others.  This was what the Boers and the natives call the “king vulture,” one of which goes with every flock.  He it is who rules the roost and also the carcase, which without his presence and permission none dare to attack.  Whether this vile fowl is of a different species from the others, or whether he is a bird of more vigorous growth and constitution that has outgrown the rest and thus become their overlord, is more than I can tell.  At least it is certain, as I can testify from long and constant observation, that almost every flock of vultures has its king.

When this particular royalty had arrived, the other aasvogels, of which perhaps there were now fifty or sixty gathered round Hans, began to show signs of interested animation.  They looked at the king bird, they looked at Hans, stretching out their naked red necks and winking their brilliant eyes.  I, however, did not pay particular attention to those upon the earth, being amply occupied in watching their fellows in the air.