"That we shall learn before to-morrow," said Eddo with a mocking laugh, and vanished down the wall.
As he went a hot gust of wind burst upon them, causing the forest without to rock and groan. Noie turned her face towards it and seemed to listen.
"What is it?" asked Rachel.
"I heard a voice in the wind, Sister," she answered. "The message I awaited has come to me."
"What message?" asked Richard listlessly.
"That I will tell you by and by, Chief," she answered. "Come to the cave, it is no longer safe here, the hurricane breaks."
So supporting each other they crept back to the cave, and there Noie made fire, feeding it with the idols and precious woods that had been brought thither as offerings. Richard and Rachel watched her wondering, for it seemed strange that she should make a fire in that heat where there was nothing to cook. Meanwhile gust succeeded gust, until a tempest of screaming wind swept over them, though no rain fell. Soon it was so fierce that the deep-rooted Tree of the Tribe rocked above them, and loose stones were blown from the crest of the great wall.
Then of a sudden Noie sprang up, and seized a flaming brand from the fire; it was the limb of a fetish, made of some resinous wood. She ran from the cave swiftly, before they could stop her, and vanished in the gathering gloom, to return again in a few moments weak and breathless. "Come out, now," she said, "and see a sight such as you shall never behold again," and there was something so strange in her voice that, notwithstanding their weakness, they rose and followed her.
Outside the cave they could not stand because of the might of the hurricane, but cast themselves upon the ground, and following Noie's outstretched arm, looked up towards the top of the mound. Then they saw that the Tree of the Tribe was on fire. Already its vast trunk and boughs were wrapped in flame, which burnt furiously because of the resin within them, while long flakes of blazing moss were being swept away to leeward, to fall among the forest that lay beyond the wall.
"Did you do this?" cried Rachel to Noie.
"Aye, Zoola, who else? That was the message which came to me. Now my office is fulfilled, but you two will live though I must die, I who have destroyed the People of the Dwarfs; I who was born that I should destroy them."
"Destroyed them!" exclaimed Rachel. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that when their Tree dies, they die, the whole race of them. Oh! Nya told me, Nya told me--they die as their Tree dies, by fire. To the Wall, to the Wall now, and look. Follow me."