________________________________________________
_ The next thing that I remember was opening my eyes and perceiving the
form of Job, who had now practically recovered from his attack of
fever. He was standing in the ray of light that pierced into the cave
from the outer air, shaking out my clothes as a makeshift for brushing
them, which he could not do because there was no brush, and then
folding them up neatly and laying them on the foot of the stone couch.
This done, he got my travelling dressing-case out of the Gladstone
bag, and opened it ready for my use. First he stood it on the foot of
the couch also, then, being afraid, I suppose, that I should kick it
off, he placed it on a leopard skin on the floor, and stood back a
step or two to observe the effect. It was not satisfactory, so he shut
up the bag, turned it on end, and, having rested it against the foot
of the couch, placed the dressing-case on it. Next he looked at the
pots full of water, which constituted our washing apparatus. "Ah!" I
heard him murmur, "no hot water in this beastly place. I suppose these
poor creatures only use it to boil each other in," and he sighed
deeply.
"What is the matter, Job?" I said.
"Beg pardon, sir," he said, touching his hair. "I thought you were
asleep, sir; and I am sure you seem as though you want it. One might
think from the look of you that you had been having a night of it."
I only groaned by way of answer. I had, indeed, been having a night of
it, such as I hope never to have again.
"How is Mr. Leo, Job?"
"Much the same, sir. If he don't soon mend, he'll end, sir; and that's
all about it; though I must say that that there savage, Ustane, do do
her best for him, almost like a baptised Christian. She is always
hanging round and looking after him, and if I ventures to interfere
it's awful to see her; her hair seems to stand on end, and she curses
and swears away in her heathen talk--at least I fancy she must be
cursing, from the look of her."
"And what do you do then?"
"I make her a perlite bow, and I say, 'Young woman, your position is
one that I don't quite understand, and can't recognise. Let me tell
you that I has a duty to perform to my master as is incapacitated by
illness, and that I am going to perform it until I am incapacitated
too,' but she don't take no heed, not she--only curses and swears away
worse than ever. Last night she put her hand under that sort of night-
shirt she wears and whips out a knife with a kind of a curl in the
blade, so I whips out my revolver, and we walks round and round each
other till at last she bursts out laughing. It isn't nice treatment
for a Christian man to have to put up with from a savage, however
handsome she may be, but it is what people must expect as is /fools/
enough" (Job laid great emphasis on the "fools") "to come to such a
place to look for things no man is meant to find. It's a judgment on
us, sir--that's my view; and I, for one, is of opinion that the
judgment isn't half done yet, and when it is done we shall be done
too, and just stop in these beastly caves with the ghosts and the
corpseses for once and all. And now, sir, I must be seeing about Mr.
Leo's broth, if that wild cat will let me; and, perhaps, you would
like to get up, sir, because it's past nine o'clock."
Job's remarks were not of an exactly cheering order to a man who had
passed such a night as I had; and, what is more, they had the weight
of truth. Taking one thing with another, it appeared to me to be an
utter impossibility that we should escape from the place we were.
Supposing that Leo recovered, and supposing that /She/ would let us
go, which was exceedingly doubtful, and that she did not "blast" us in
some moment of vexation, and that we were not hot-potted by the
Amahagger, it would be quite impossible for us to find our way across
the network of marshes which, stretching for scores and scores of
miles, formed a stronger and more impassable fortification round the
various Amahagger households than any that could be built or designed
by man. No, there was but one thing to do--face it out; and, speaking
for my own part, I was so intensely interested in the whole weird
story that, so far as I was concerned, notwithstanding the shattered
state of my nerves, I asked nothing better, even if my life paid
forfeit to my curiosity. What man for whom physiology has charms could
forbear to study such a character as that of this Ayesha when the
opportunity of doing so presented itself? The very terror of the
pursuit added to its fascination, and besides, as I was forced to own
to myself even now in the sober light of day, she herself had
attractions that I could not forget. Not even the dreadful sight which
I had witnessed during the night could drive that folly from my mind;
and alas! that I should have to admit it, it has not been driven
thence to this hour.
After I had dressed myself I passed into the eating, or rather
embalming chamber, and had some food, which was as before brought to
me by the girl mutes. When I had finished I went and saw poor Leo, who
was quite off his head, and did not even know me. I asked Ustane how
she thought he was; but she only shook her head and began to cry a
little. Evidently her hopes were small; and I then and there made up
my mind that, if it were in any way possible, I would get /She/ to
come and see him. Surely she would cure him if she chose--at any rate
she said she could. While I was in the room, Billali entered, and also
shook his head.
"He will die at night," he said.
"God forbid, my father," I answered, and turned away with a heavy
heart.
"/She-who-must-be-obeyed/ commands thy presence, my Baboon," said the
old man as soon as we got to the curtain; "but, oh my dear son, be
more careful. Yesterday I made sure in my heart that /She/ would blast
thee when thou didst not crawl upon thy stomach before her. She is
sitting in the great hall even now to do justice upon those who would
have smitten thee and the Lion. Come on, my son; come swiftly."
I turned, and followed him down the passage, and when we reached the
great central cave saw that many Amahagger, some robed, and some
merely clad in the sweet simplicity of a leopard skin, were hurrying
along it. We mingled with the throng, and walked up the enormous and,
indeed, almost interminable cave. All the way its walls were
elaborately sculptured, and every twenty paces or so passages opened
out of it at right angles, leading, Billali told me, to tombs,
hollowed in the rock by "the people who were before." Nobody visited
those tombs now, he said; and I must say that my heart rejoiced when I
thought of the opportunities of antiquarian research which opened out
before me.
At last we came to the head of the cave, where there was a rock daïs
almost exactly similar to the one on which we had been so furiously
attacked, a fact that proved to me that these daïs must have been used
as altars, probably for the celebration of religious ceremonies, and
more especially of rites connected with the interment of the dead. On
either side of this daïs were passages leading, Billali informed me,
to other caves full of dead bodies. "Indeed," he added, "the whole
mountain is full of dead, and nearly all of them are perfect."
In front of the daïs were gathered a great number of people of both
sexes, who stood staring about in their peculiar gloomy fashion, which
would have reduced Mark Tapley himself to misery in about five
minutes. On the daïs was a rude chair of black wood inlaid with ivory,
having a seat made of grass fibre, and a footstool formed of a wooden
slab attached to the framework of the chair.
Suddenly there was a cry of "Hiya! Hiya!" ("/She! She!/"), and
thereupon the entire crowd of spectators instantly precipitated itself
upon the ground, and lay still as though it were individually and
collectively stricken dead, leaving me standing there like some
solitary survivor of a massacre. As it did so a long string of guards
began to defile from a passage to the left, and ranged themselves on
either side of the daïs. Then followed about a score of male mutes,
then as many women mutes bearing lamps, and then a tall white figure,
swathed from head to foot, in whom I recognised /She/ herself. She
mounted the daïs and sat down upon the chair, and spoke to me in
/Greek/, I suppose because she did not wish those present to
understand what she said.
"Come hither, oh Holly," she said, "and sit thou at my feet, and see
me do justice on those who would have slain thee. Forgive me if my
Greek doth halt like a lame man; it is so long since I have heard the
sound of it that my tongue is stiff, and will not bend rightly to the
words."
I bowed, and, mounting the daïs, sat down at her feet.
"How hast thou slept, my Holly?" she asked.
"I slept not well, oh Ayesha!" I answered with perfect truth, and with
an inward fear that perhaps she knew how I had passed the heart of the
night.
"So," she said, with a little laugh; "I, too, have not slept well.
Last night I had dreams, and methinks that thou didst call them to me,
oh Holly."
"Of what didst thou dream, Ayesha?" I asked indifferently.
"I dreamed," she answered quickly, "of one I hate and one I love," and
then, as though to turn the conversation, she addressed the captain of
her guard in Arabic: "Let the men be brought before me."
The captain bowed low, for the guard and her attendants did not
prostrate themselves, but had remained standing, and departed with his
underlings down a passage to the right.
Then came a silence. /She/ leaned her swathed head upon her hand and
appeared to be lost in thought, while the multitude before her
continued to grovel upon their stomachs, only screwing their heads
round a little so as to get a view of us with one eye. It seemed that
their Queen so rarely appeared in public that they were willing to
undergo this inconvenience, and even graver risks, to have the
opportunity of looking on her, or rather on her garments, for no
living man there except myself had ever seen her face. At last we
caught sight of the waving of lights, and heard the tramp of men
coming along the passage, and in filed the guard, and with them the
survivors of our would-be murderers, to the number of twenty or more,
on whose countenances a natural expression of sullenness struggled
with the terror that evidently filled their savage hearts. They were
ranged in front of the daïs, and would have cast themselves down on
the floor of the cave like the spectators, but /She/ stopped them.
"Nay," she said in her softest voice, "stand; I pray you stand.
Perchance the time will soon be when ye shall grow weary of being
stretched out," and she laughed melodiously.
I saw a cringe of terror run along the rank of the doomed wretches,
and, wicked villains as they were, I felt sorry for them. Some
minutes, perhaps two or three, passed before anything fresh occurred,
during which /She/ appeared from the movement of her head--for, of
course, we could not see her eyes--to be slowly and carefully
examining each delinquent. At last she spoke, addressing herself to me
in a quiet and deliberate tone.
"Dost thou, oh my guest, recognise these men?"
"Ay, oh Queen, nearly all of them," I said, and I saw them glower at
me as I said it.
"Then tell to me, and this great company, the tale whereof I have
heard."
Thus adjured, I, in as few words as I could, related the history of
the cannibal feast, and of the attempted torture of our poor servant.
The narrative was received in perfect silence, both by the accused and
by the audience, and also by /She/ herself. When I had done, Ayesha
called upon Billali by name, and, lifting his head from the ground,
but without rising, the old man confirmed my story. No further
evidence was taken.
"Ye have heard," said /She/ at length, in a cold, clear voice, very
different from her usual tones--indeed, it was one of the most
remarkable things about this extraordinary creature that her voice had
the power of suiting itself in a wonderful manner to the mood of the
moment. "What have ye to say, ye rebellious children, why vengeance
should not be done upon you?"
For some time there was no answer, but at last one of the men, a fine,
broad-chested fellow, well on in middle-life, with deep-graven
features and an eye like a hawk's, spoke, and said that the orders
that they had received were not to harm the white men; nothing was
said of their black servant, so, egged on thereto by a woman who was
now dead, they proceeded to try to hot-pot him after the ancient and
honourable custom of their country, with a view of eating him in due
course. As for their sudden attack upon ourselves, it was made in an
access of sudden fury, and they deeply regretted it. He ended by
humbly praying that they might be banished into the swamps, to live
and die as it might chance; but I saw it written on his face that he
had but little hope of mercy.
Then came a pause, and the most intense silence reigned over the whole
scene, which, illuminated as it was by the flicker of the lamps
striking out broad patterns of light and shadow upon the rocky walls,
was as strange as any I ever saw, even in that unholy land. Upon the
ground before the daïs were stretched scores of the corpselike forms
of the spectators, till at last the long lines of them were lost in
the gloomy background. Before this outstretched audience were the
knots of evil-doers, trying to cover up their natural terrors with a
brave appearance of unconcern. On the right and left stood the silent
guards, robed in white and armed with great spears and daggers, and
men and women mutes watching with hard curious eyes. Then, seated in
her barbaric chair above them all, with myself at her feet, was the
veiled white woman, whose loveliness and awesome power seemed to
visibly shine about her like a halo, or rather like the glow from some
unseen light. Never have I seen her veiled shape look more terrible
than it did in that space, while she gathered herself up for
vengeance.
At last it came.
"Dogs and serpents," /She/ began in a low voice that gradually
gathered power as she went on, till the place rang with it. "Eaters of
human flesh, two things have ye done. First, ye have attacked these
strangers, being white men, and would have slain their servant, and
for that alone death is your reward. But that is not all. Ye have
dared to disobey me. Did I not send my word unto you by Billali, my
servant, and the father of your household? Did I not bid you to
hospitably entertain these strangers, whom now ye have striven to
slay, and whom, had not they been brave and strong beyond the strength
of men, ye would cruelly have murdered? Hath it not been taught to you
from childhood that the law of /She/ is an ever fixed law, and that he
who breaketh it by so much as one jot or tittle shall perish? And is
not my lightest word a law? Have not your fathers taught you this, I
say, whilst as yet ye were but children? Do ye not know that as well
might ye bid these great caves to fall upon you, or the sun to cease
its journeying, as to hope to turn me from my courses, or make my word
light or heavy, according to your minds? Well do ye know it, ye Wicked
Ones. But ye are all evil--evil to the core--the wickedness bubbles up
in you like a fountain in the spring-time. Were it not for me,
generations since had ye ceased to be, for of your own evil way had ye
destroyed each other. And now, because ye have done this thing,
because ye have striven to put these men, my guests, to death, and yet
more because ye have dared to disobey my word, this is the doom that I
doom you to. That ye be taken to the cave of torture,[*] and given
over to the tormentors, and that on the going down of to-morrow's sun
those of you who yet remain alive be slain, even as ye would have
slain the servant of this my guest."
[*] "The cave of torture." I afterwards saw this dreadful place, also
a legacy from the prehistoric people who lived in Kôr. The only
objects in the cave itself were slabs of rock arranged in various
positions to facilitate the operations of the torturers. Many of
these slabs, which were of a porous stone, were stained quite dark
with the blood of ancient victims that had soaked into them. Also
in the centre of the room was a place for a furnace, with a cavity
wherein to heat the historic pot. But the most dreadful thing
about the cave was that over each slab was a sculptured
illustration of the appropriate torture being applied. These
sculptures were so awful that I will not harrow the reader by
attempting a description of them.--L. H. H.
She ceased, and a faint murmur of horror ran round the cave. As for
the victims, as soon as they realised the full hideousness of their
doom, their stoicism forsook them, and they flung themselves down upon
the ground, and wept and implored for mercy in a way that was dreadful
to behold. I, too, turned to Ayesha, and begged her to spare them, or
at least to mete out their fate in some less awful way. But she was
hard as adamant about it.
"My Holly," she said, again speaking in Greek, which, to tell the
truth, although I have always been considered a better scholar of the
language than most men, I found it rather difficult to follow, chiefly
because of the change in the fall of the accent. Ayesha, of course,
talked with the accent of her contemporaries, whereas we have only
tradition and the modern accent to guide us as to the exact
pronunciation. "My Holly, it cannot be. Were I to show mercy to those
wolves, your lives would not be safe among this people for a day. Thou
knowest them not. They are tigers to lap blood, and even now they
hunger for your lives. How thinkest thou that I rule this people? I
have but a regiment of guards to do my bidding, therefore it is not by
force. It is by terror. My empire is of the imagination. Once in a
generation mayhap I do as I have done but now, and slay a score by
torture. Believe not that I would be cruel, or take vengeance on
anything so low. What can it profit me to be avenged on such as these?
Those who live long, my Holly, have no passions, save where they have
interests. Though I may seem to slay in wrath, or because my mood is
crossed, it is not so. Thou hast seen how in the heavens the little
clouds blow this way and that without a cause, yet behind them is the
great wind sweeping on its path whither it listeth. So it is with me,
oh Holly. My moods and changes are the little clouds, and fitfully
these seem to turn; but behind them ever blows the great wind of my
purpose. Nay, the men must die; and die as I have said." Then,
suddenly turning to the captain of the guard:--
"As my word is, so be it!" _
Read next: CHAPTER XVI - THE TOMBS OF K&: 212;R
Read previous: CHAPTER XIV - A SOUL IN HELL
Table of content of She
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
