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_ When I opened my eyes again I found myself lying on a skin mat not far
from the fire round which we had been gathered for that dreadful
feast. Near me lay Leo, still apparently in a swoon, and over him was
bending the tall form of the girl Ustane, who was washing a deep spear
wound in his side with cold water preparatory to binding it up with
linen. Leaning against the wall of the cave behind her was Job,
apparently uninjured, but bruised and trembling. On the other side of
the fire, tossed about this way and that, as though they had thrown
themselves down to sleep in some moment of absolute exhaustion, were
the bodies of those whom we had killed in our frightful struggle for
life. I counted them: there were twelve besides the woman, and the
corpse of poor Mahomed, who had died by my hand, which, the fire-
stained pot at its side, was placed at the end of the irregular line.
To the left a body of men were engaged in binding the arms of the
survivors of the cannibals behind them, and then fastening them two
and two. The villains were submitting with a look of sulky
indifference upon their faces which accorded ill with the baffled fury
that gleamed in their sombre eyes. In front of these men, directing
the operations, stood no other than our friend Billali, looking rather
tired, but particularly patriarchal with his flowing beard, and as
cool and unconcerned as though he were superintending the cutting up
of an ox.
Presently he turned, and perceiving that I was sitting up advanced to
me, and with the utmost courtesy said that he trusted that I felt
better. I answered that at present I scarcely knew how I felt, except
that I ached all over.
Then he bent down and examined Leo's wound.
"It is an evil cut," he said, "but the spear has not pierced the
entrails. He will recover."
"Thanks to thy arrival, my father," I answered. "In another minute we
should all have been beyond the reach of recovery, for those devils of
thine would have slain us as they would have slain our servant," and I
pointed towards Mahomed.
The old man ground his teeth, and I saw an extraordinary expression of
malignity light up his eyes.
"Fear not, my son," he answered. "Vengeance shall be taken on them
such as would make the flesh twist upon the bones merely to hear of
it. To /She/ shall they go, and her vengeance shall be worthy of her
greatness. That man," pointing to Mahomed, "I tell thee that man would
have died a merciful death to the death these hyæna-men shall die.
Tell me, I pray of thee, how it came about."
In a few words I sketched what had happened.
"Ah, so," he answered. "Thou seest, my son, here there is a custom
that if a stranger comes into this country he may be slain by 'the
pot,' and eaten."
"It is hospitality turned upside down," I answered feebly. "In our
country we entertain a stranger, and give him food to eat. Here ye eat
him, and are entertained."
"It is a custom," he answered, with a shrug. "Myself I think it an
evil one; but then," he added by an afterthought, "I do not like the
taste of strangers, especially after they have wandered through the
swamps and lived on wild-fowl. When /She-who-must-be-obeyed/ sent
orders that ye were to be saved alive she said naught of the black
man, therefore, being hyænas, these men lusted after his flesh, and
the woman it was, whom thou didst rightly slay, who put it into their
evil hearts to hot-pot him. Well, they will have their reward. Better
for them would it be if they had never seen the light than that they
should stand before /She/ in her terrible anger. Happy are those of
them who died by your hands."
"Ah," he went on, "it was a gallant fight that ye fought. Knowest thou
that, long-armed old baboon that thou art, thou hast crushed in the
ribs of those two who are laid out there as though they were but as
the shell on an egg? And the young one, the lion, it was a beautiful
stand that he made--one against so many--three did he slay outright,
and that one there"--and he pointed to a body that was still moving a
little--"will die anon, for his head is cracked across, and others of
those who are bound are hurt. It was a gallant fight, and thou and he
have made a friend of me by it, for I love to see a well-fought fray.
But tell me, my son, the baboon--and now I think of it thy face, too,
is hairy, and altogether like a baboon's--how was it that ye slew
those with a hole in them?--Ye made a noise, they say, and slew them--
they fell down on the faces at the noise?"
I explained to him as well as I could, but very shortly--for I was
terribly wearied, and only persuaded to talk at all through fear of
offending one so powerful if I refused to do so--what were the
properties of gunpowder, and he instantly suggested that I should
illustrate what I said by operating on the person of one of the
prisoners. One, he said, never would be counted, and it would not only
be very interesting to him, but would give me the opportunity of an
instalment of revenge. He was greatly astounded when I told him that
it was not our custom to avenge ourselves in cold blood, and that we
left vengeance to the law and a higher power, of which he knew
nothing. I added, however, that when I recovered I would take him out
shooting with us, and he should kill an animal for himself, and at
this he was as pleased as a child at the promise of a new toy.
Just then Leo opened his eyes beneath the stimulus of some brandy (of
which we still had a little) that Job had poured down his throat, and
our conversation came to an end.
After this we managed to get Leo, who was in a very poor way indeed,
and only half conscious, safely off to bed, supported by Job and that
brave girl Ustane, to whom, had I not been afraid that she might
resent it, I would certainly have given a kiss for her splendid
behaviour in saving my boy's life at the risk of her own. But Ustane
was not the sort of young person with whom one would care to take
liberties unless one were perfectly certain that they would not be
misunderstood, so I repressed my inclinations. Then, bruised and
battered, but with a sense of safety in my breast to which I had for
some days been a stranger, I crept off to my own little sepulchre, not
forgetting before I laid down in it to thank Providence from the
bottom of my heart that it was not a sepulchre indeed, as, save for a
merciful combination of events that I can only attribute to its
protection, it would certainly have been for me that night. Few men
have been nearer their end and yet escaped it than we were on that
dreadful day.
I am a bad sleeper at the best of times, and my dreams that night when
at last I got to rest were not of the pleasantest. The awful vision of
poor Mahomed struggling to escape the red-hot pot would haunt them,
and then in the background, as it were, a veiled form was always
hovering, which, from time to time, seemed to draw the coverings from
its body, revealing now the perfect shape of a lovely blooming woman,
and now again the white bones of a grinning skeleton, and which, as it
veiled and unveiled, uttered the mysterious and apparently meaningless
sentence:--
"That which is alive and hath known death, and that which is dead
yet can never die, for in the Circle of the Spirit life is naught
and death is naught. Yea, all things live for ever, though at
times they sleep and are forgotten."
The morning came at last, but when it came I found that I was too
stiff and sore to rise. About seven Job arrived, limping terribly, and
with his face the colour of a rotten apple, and told me that Leo had
slept fairly, but was very weak. Two hours afterwards Billali (Job
called him "Billy-goat," to which, indeed, his white beard gave him
some resemblance, or more familiarly, "Billy") came too, bearing a
lamp in his hand, his towering form reaching nearly to the roof of the
little chamber. I pretended to be asleep, and through the cracks of my
eyelids watched his sardonic but handsome old face. He fixed his hawk-
like eyes upon me, and stroked his glorious white beard, which, by the
way, would have been worthy a hundred a year to any London barber as
an advertisement.
"Ah!" I heard him mutter (Billali had a habit of muttering to
himself), "he is ugly--ugly as the other is beautiful--a very Baboon,
it was a good name. But I like the man. Strange now, at my age, that I
should like a man. What says the proverb--'Mistrust all men, and slay
him whom thou mistrustest overmuch; and as for women, flee from them,
for they are evil, and in the end will destroy thee.' It is a good
proverb, especially the last part of it: I think that it must have
come down from the ancients. Nevertheless I like this Baboon, and I
wonder where they taught him his tricks, and I trust that /She/ will
not bewitch him. Poor Baboon! he must be wearied after that fight. I
will go lest I should awake him."
I waited till he had turned and was nearly through the entrance,
walking softly on tiptoe, and then I called after him.
"My father," I said, "is it thou?"
"Yes, my son, it is I; but let me not disturb thee. I did but come to
see how thou didst fare, and to tell thee that those who would have
slain thee, my Baboon, are by now far on their road to /She/. /She/
said that ye also were to come at once, but I fear ye cannot yet."
"Nay," I said, "not till we have recovered a little; but have me borne
out into the daylight, I pray thee, my father. I love not this place."
"Ah, no," he answered, "it hath a sad air. I remember when I was a boy
I found the body of a fair woman lying where thou liest now, yes, on
that very bench. She was so beautiful that I was wont to creep in
hither with a lamp and gaze upon her. Had it not been for her cold
hands, almost could I think that she slept and would one day awake, so
fair and peaceful was she in her robes of white. White was she, too,
and her hair was yellow and lay down her almost to the feet. There are
many such still in the tombs at the place where /She/ is, for those
who set them there had a way I know naught of, whereby to keep their
beloved out of the crumbling hand of Decay, even when Death had slain
them. Ay, day by day I came hither, and gazed on her till at last--
laugh not at me, stranger, for I was but a silly lad--I learned to
love that dead form, that shell which once had held a life that no
more is. I would creep up to her and kiss her cold face, and wonder
how many men had lived and died since she was, and who had loved her
and embraced her in the days that long had passed away. And, my
Baboon, I think I learned wisdom from that dead one, for of a truth it
taught me of the littleness of life, and the length of Death, and how
all things that are under the sun go down one path, and are for ever
forgotten. And so I mused, and it seemed to me that wisdom flowed into
me from the dead, till one day my mother, a watchful woman, but hasty-
minded, seeing I was changed, followed me, and saw the beautiful white
one, and feared that I was bewitched, as, indeed, I was. So half in
dread, and half in anger, she took up the lamp, and standing the dead
woman up against the wall even there, set fire to her hair, and she
burnt fiercely, even down to the feet, for those who are thus kept
burn excellently well.
"See, my son, there on the roof is yet the smoke of her burning."
I looked up doubtfully, and there, sure enough, on the roof of the
sepulchre, was a peculiarly unctuous and sooty mark, three feet or
more across. Doubtless it had in the course of years been rubbed off
the sides of the little cave, but on the roof it remained, and there
was no mistaking its appearance.
"She burnt," he went on in a meditative way, "even to the feet, but
the feet I came back and saved, cutting the burnt bone from them, and
hid them under the stone bench there, wrapped up in a piece of linen.
Surely, I remember it as though it were but yesterday. Perchance they
are there, if none have found them, even to this hour. Of a truth I
have not entered this chamber from that time to this very day. Stay, I
will look," and, kneeling down, he groped about with his long arm in
the recess under the stone bench. Presently his face brightened, and
with an exclamation he pulled something forth which was caked in dust;
which he shook on to the floor. It was covered with the remains of a
rotting rag, which he undid, and revealed to my astonished gaze a
beautifully shaped and almost white woman's foot, looking as fresh and
firm as though it had but now been placed there.
"Thou seest, my son, the Baboon," he said, in a sad voice, "I spake
the truth to thee, for here is yet one foot remaining. Take it, my
son, and gaze upon it."
I took this cold fragment of mortality in my hand and looked at it in
the light of the lamp with feelings which I cannot describe, so mixed
up were they between astonishment, fear, and fascination. It was
light, much lighter I should say than it had been in the living state,
and the flesh to all appearance was still flesh, though about it there
clung a faintly aromatic odour. For the rest it was not shrunk or
shrivelled, or even black and unsightly, like the flesh of Egyptian
mummies, but plump and fair, and, except where it had been slightly
burnt, perfect as on the day of death--a very triumph of embalming.
Poor little foot! I set it down upon the stone bench where it had lain
for so many thousand years, and wondered whose was the beauty that it
had upborne through the pomp and pageantry of a forgotten civilisation
--first as a merry child's, then as a blushing maid's, and lastly as a
perfect woman's. Through what halls of Life had its soft step echoed,
and in the end, with what courage had it trodden down the dusty ways
of Death! To whose side had it stolen in the hush of night when the
black slave slept upon the marble floor, and who had listened for its
stealing? Shapely little foot! Well might it have been set upon the
proud neck of a conqueror bent at last to woman's beauty, and well
might the lips of nobles and of kings have been pressed upon its
jewelled whiteness.
I wrapped up this relic of the past in the remnants of the old linen
rag which had evidently formed a portion of its owner's grave-clothes,
for it was partially burnt, and put it away in my Gladstone bag--a
strange combination, I thought. Then with Billali's help I staggered
off to see Leo. I found him dreadfully bruised, worse even than
myself, perhaps owing to the excessive whiteness of his skin, and
faint and weak with the loss of blood from the flesh wound in his
side, but for all that cheerful as a cricket, and asking for some
breakfast. Job and Ustane got him on to the bottom, or rather the
sacking of a litter, which was removed from its pole for that purpose,
and with the aid of old Billali carried him out into the shade at the
mouth of the cave, from which, by the way, every trace of the
slaughter of the previous night had now been removed, and there we all
breakfasted, and indeed spent that day, and most of the two following
ones.
On the third morning Job and myself were practically recovered. Leo
also was so much better that I yielded to Billali's often expressed
entreaty, and agreed to start at once upon our journey to Kôr, which
we were told was the name of the place where the mysterious /She/
lived, though I still feared for its effect upon Leo, and especially
lest the motion should cause his wound, which was scarcely skinned
over, to break open again. Indeed, had it not been for Billali's
evident anxiety to get off, which led us to suspect that some
difficulty or danger might threaten us if we did not comply with it, I
would not have consented to go. _
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