She: A History of Adventure Read online

  Ustane, by the way, was also blindfolded, I do not know why, unless it was from fear lest she should impart the secrets of the route to us.

  This operation performed we started on once more, and soon, by the echoing sound of the footsteps of the bearers and the increased noise of the water caused by reverberation in a confined space, I knew that we were entering into the bowels of the great mountain. It was an eerie sensation, that of being borne into the dead heart of the rock we knew not whither, but I was growing accustomed to such experiences by this time, and not to be surprised at anything. So I lay still, and listened to the tramp, tramp of the bearers and the rushing of the water, and tried to believe that I was enjoying myself. Presently the men set up the melancholy little chant that I had heard on the evening when we were captured in the whaleboat, and the effect produced by their voices was very curious; indeed quite indescribable. After a while the stagnant air became exceedingly thick and heavy, so much so, indeed, that I felt as though I were about to choke, till at length the litter turned a corner, then another and another, and the sound of the running water ceased. After this the air grew fresher again, but the turns were continuous, and to me, blindfolded as I was, most bewildering. I tried to keep a map of them in my mind in case it might ever be necessary for us to try to escape by this route, but, needless to say, I failed utterly. Another half-hour or so went by, when suddenly I became aware that we had passed into the open air. I could see the light through my bandage and feel its freshness on my face. A few more minutes and the litters halted, and I heard Billali order Ustane to remove her bandage and undo ours. Without waiting for her attentions I loosed the knot of mine, and looked out.

  As I anticipated, we had journeyed through the precipice, and were now on the farther side, and immediately beneath its beetling face. The first thing I noticed was that the cliff is not nearly so high here, not so high I should say by five hundred feet, which proved that the bed of the lake, or rather of the vast ancient crater in which we stood, was much above the level of the surrounding plain. For the rest, we found ourselves in a huge rock-surrounded cup, not unlike that of the first place where we had sojourned, only ten times its size. Indeed, I could but just discern the frowning line of the opposite cliffs. A great portion of the plain thus enclosed by Nature was cultivated, and fenced in with walls of stone, placed there to prevent the cattle and goats, of which there were large herds, from breaking into the gardens.

  Dotted about this plain rose grass mounds, and some miles away towards its centre I thought that I could see the outline of colossal ruins. I had no time to observe anything more at the moment, for we were instantly surrounded by crowds of Amahagger, similar in every particular to those with whom we were already familiar, who, though they spoke little, pressed round us so closely as to obscure the view to a person lying in a hammock. Then of a sudden a number of armed men arranged in companies appeared, running swiftly towards us, marshalled by officers who held ivory wands in their hands, having, so far as I could discover, emerged from the face of the precipice like ants from their burrows. These men as well as their officers were all robed in addition to the usual leopard skin, and, as I gathered, they formed the bodyguard of She herself.

  Their leader advanced to Billali, saluted him by placing his ivory wand transversely across his forehead, and then asked some question which I could not catch. Billali having answered him briefly, the regiment turned and marched along the side of the cliff, our cavalcade of litters following in their track. After journeying thus for half a mile we halted once more in front of the mouth of a tremendous cave, measuring about sixty feet in height by eighty wide. Here Billali descended from his litter, requesting Job and myself to follow him, Leo, of course, being too ill to do anything of the sort. I obeyed, and we entered the great cave, into which the beams of the setting sun penetrated for some distance, while beyond the reach of the daylight it was faintly illuminated with lamps which seemed to me to stretch away for an almost immeasurable distance, like the gaslights of an empty London street.

  The first thing I noticed was that the walls were covered with sculptures in bas-relief, for the most part of a sort similar to those upon the vases that I have described:—love-scenes principally, then hunting pieces, pictures of executions, and of the torture of criminals by the placing of a pot upon the head, presumably red-hot, thus showing whence our hosts had derived this pleasant practice. There were very few battle-scenes, though many of duels, and of men running and wrestling, and from this fact I am led to believe that this people were not much subject to attack by exterior foes, either on account of the isolation of their position or because of their great strength. Between the pictures were columns of stone characters of a nature absolutely new to me; at any rate they were neither Greek, nor Egyptian, nor Hebrew, nor Assyrian—this I am sure of. They looked more like Chinese writings than any other that I am acquainted with. Near to the entrance of the cave both pictures and writings were worn away, but further on in many cases they were absolutely fresh and perfect as the day on which the sculptor had ceased to work upon them.

  The regiment of guards did not come further than the entrance to the cave, where they formed up to let us pass through. On entering the place itself, however, we were met by a man robed in white, who bowed humbly, but said nothing, which was not very wonderful, as afterwards it appeared that he was a deaf mute.

  Running at right angles to the great cave, at a distance of some twenty feet from its entrance, lay a smaller cave or wide gallery, that was pierced into the rock both to the right and to the left of the main cavern. In front of the gallery to our left stood two guards, from which circumstance I argued that it might be the entrance to the apartments of She herself. The mouth of the right-hand gallery was unguarded, and the mute indicated that we were to pass along it. Walking a few yards down this passage, which was lighted with lamps, we came to the entrance of a chamber having a curtain made of some grass material hung over the doorway, not unlike a Zanzibar mat in appearance. This the mute drew back with another profound obeisance, and led the way into a good-sized apartment, hewn, as usual, out of the solid rock, but to my great relief lighted by means of a shaft pierced in the face of the precipice. In this room were a stone bedstead, pots full of water for washing, and leopard skins beautifully tanned to serve as blankets.

  Here we left Leo, who was still sleeping heavily, and Ustane stayed with him. I noticed that the mute gave her a very sharp look, as much as to say, “Who are you, and by whose orders do you come here?” Next he conducted us to a very similar room, which Job took possession of, and then to two more that were occupied respectively by Billali and myself.

  XII

  “SHE”

  The first care of Job and myself, after attending to Leo, was to wash ourselves and put on clean clothing, for what we were wearing had not been changed since the loss of the dhow. Fortunately, as I think that I have said, by far the greater part of our personal baggage had been packed into the whaleboat, and therefore was saved, and brought hither by the bearers, although the stores laid in by us for barter and presents to the natives were lost. Nearly all our clothing was made of a well-shrunk and very strong grey flannel, and excellent I found it for travelling in these places. Though a Norfolk jacket, shirt, and pair of trousers of this material only weighed about four pounds, a consideration in tropical countries, where every extra ounce tells on the wearer, it was warm, and offered a good resistance to the rays of the sun, and best of all to chills, which are so apt to result from sudden changes of temperature.

  Never shall I forget the comfort of that “wash and brush-up,” and of those clean flannels. The only thing that was wanting to complete my joy was a cake of soap, of which we had none.

  Afterwards I discovered that the Amahagger, who do not reckon dirt among their many disagreeable qualities, use a kind of burnt earth for washing purposes, which, though unpleasant to the touch till one is accustomed to it, forms a very fair substitute for soap.

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p; By the time that I was dressed, and had combed and trimmed my black beard, the previous condition of which was certainly sufficiently unkempt to give weight to Billali’s appellation for me of “Baboon,” I began to feel most uncommonly hungry. Therefore I was by no means sorry when, without the slightest preparatory sound or warning, the curtain over the entrance to my cave was flung aside, and another mute, a young girl this time, announced to me by signs that I could not misunderstand—namely, by opening her mouth and pointing down it—that there was something ready to eat. Accordingly I followed her into the next chamber, which we had not yet entered, where I found Job, who, to his great embarrassment, had also been conducted thither by a fair mute. Job never forgot the advances the “hot-pot” lady had made towards him, and suspected every girl who came near to him of similar designs.

  “These young parties have a way of looking at one, sir,” he would say apologetically, “which I don’t call respectable.”

  This chamber was twice the size of the sleeping caves, and I saw at once that originally it had served as a refectory, and also, probably, as an embalming-room for the Priests of the Dead; for I may as well explain here that these hollowed-out caves were nothing more nor less than vast catacombs, in which for tens of ages the mortal remains of the great extinct race whose monuments surrounded us had been first preserved, with an art and a completeness that have never since been equalled, and then hidden away for all time. On each side of this particular rock-chamber ran a long and solid stone table, about three feet wide by three feet six in height, hewn out of the living rock, of which it had formed part, and was still attached to at the base. These tables were slightly hollowed out or curved inward, to give room for the knees of any one sitting on the stone ledge that had been cut as a bench along the side of the cave at a distance of about two feet from them. Each of them, also, was so arranged that it ended just under a shaft pierced in the rock for the admission of light and air. On examining them carefully, however, I saw that there was a difference between them which had escaped my attention at first; namely, that one of the tables, that to the left as we entered the cave, had evidently been used, not to eat upon, but for the purposes of embalming. That this was beyond all question the case was clear from five shallow depressions in the stone of the table, all shaped like a human form, with a separate place for the head to lie in, and a little bridge to support the neck, each depression being of a different size, to accommodate bodies varying in stature from a full-grown man’s to that of a child, and having holes bored in it at intervals to carry off fluid. Indeed, if any further confirmation were required, we had but to look at the wall of the cave above to find it. For there, sculptured round the apartment, looking nearly as fresh as on the day of completion, was the pictorial representation of the death, embalming, and burial of an old man with a long beard, probably an ancient king or grandee of this country.

  The first picture represented his death. He was lying upon a couch supported by four curved corner-posts fashioned to a knob at the end, and in appearance resembling written notes of music. Evidently he was in the very act of expiring, for gathered round the couch were women and children weeping, the former with their hair hanging down their backs. The next scene represented the embalmment of the body, which lay stark upon a table with depressions in it, similar to the one before us; probably, indeed, it was a picture of the same table. Three men were employed at the work—one superintending; one supporting a funnel shaped exactly like a port-wine strainer, of which the narrow end was fixed in an incision in the breast, no doubt in the great pectoral artery; while the third, who was depicted as standing straddle-legged over the corpse, held a very large jug high in his hand, and poured from it some steaming fluid which fell accurately into the funnel. The most curious part of this sculpture is that both the man with the funnel and the man who pours the fluid are depicted as holding their noses, either I suppose because of the stench arising from the body, or more probably to keep out the aromatic fumes of the hot fluid which was being forced into the dead man’s veins. Another curious thing which I am unable to explain is that all three men are represented with a band of linen tied round the face having holes in it for the eyes.

  The third sculpture was a picture of the burial of the deceased. There he lay, stiff and cold, clothed in a linen robe, and reposing on a stone slab such as I had slept upon at our first sojourning-place. At his head and feet burnt lamps, and by his side were placed several of the beautiful painted vases that I have described, which were perhaps supposed to be full of provisions. The little chamber was crowded with mourners, and with musicians playing on instruments resembling a lyre, while near the foot of the corpse stood a man holding a sheet, with which he was about to cover it from view.

  These sculptures, looked at merely as works of art, were so remarkable that I make no apology for describing them rather fully. I consider them also of surpassing interest as representing, probably with studious accuracy, the rites of the dead as practised among an utterly lost people, and even then I thought how envious some antiquarian friends of my own at Cambridge would be if ever I found an opportunity of describing these wonderful remains to them. Probably they would say that I was exaggerating, notwithstanding that every page of this history must bear so much internal evidence of its truth that obviously it would have been quite impossible for me to have invented it.

  To return. So soon as I had hastily examined these sculptures, which I think I omitted to mention are executed in relief, we sat down to a very excellent meal of boiled goat’s-flesh, fresh milk, and cakes made of meal, the whole being served upon clean wooden platters.

  When we had eaten we returned to see how poor Leo went on, Billali saying that he must now wait upon She, and hear her commands. On reaching Leo’s room we found him exceedingly ill. He had awakened from his torpor altogether off his head, and was inclined to be violent, babbling incessantly about some boat-race on the Cam. Indeed, when we entered the room Ustane was holding him down. I spoke to him, and my voice seemed to soothe him; at any rate he grew much quieter, and was persuaded to swallow a dose of quinine.

  I had been sitting with him for an hour, perhaps—at least I remember it was becoming so dark that I could only just see his head lying like a gleam of gold upon the pillow which we had extemporised out of a bag covered with a blanket—when suddenly Billali arrived with an air of great importance, and informed me that She herself had deigned to express a wish to see me—an honour, he added, accorded to but very few. I think that he was a little horrified at my cool way of taking the honour, but the truth is that I did not feel overwhelmed with gratitude at the prospect of meeting some savage, dusky queen, however absolute and mysterious she might be, more especially as my mind was full of dear Leo, for whose life I began to have great fears. However, I rose to follow him, and as I went I caught sight of something bright lying on the floor, which I picked up. Perhaps the reader will remember that with the potsherd in the casket was a “composition” scarabæus marked with a round O, a goose, and another curious hieroglyphic, the meaning of which signs is “Suten se Rā,” or “Royal Son of the Sun.” This scarab, which is a very small one, Leo had insisted upon having set in a massive gold ring, such as is generally used for signets, and it was this very ring that I now found. He had pulled it off in the paroxysm of his fever, at least I suppose so, and flung it down upon the rock-floor. Thinking that if I left it about it might be lost, I slipped it on to my own little finger, and then followed Billali, leaving Job and Ustane with Leo.

  We passed down the passage, crossed the great aisle-like cave, and came to the corresponding passage on the other side, at the mouth of which the guards stood like two statues. As we came they bowed their heads in salutation, and then, lifting their long spears, placed them transversely across their foreheads, as the leader of the soldiers that met us had done with his ivory wand. We stepped between them, and found ourselves in a gallery exactly similar to that which led to our own apartments, only this passage, by co
mparison, was brilliantly lighted. A few paces down it we were met by four mutes—two men and two women—who bowed low and then disposed themselves, the women in front and the men behind of us, and in this order we continued our procession past several doorways hung with curtains resembling those in our own quarters, which I afterwards discovered opened into chambers occupied by the mutes who attended on She. A few paces more and we came to another doorway facing us, and not to our left like the others, which seemed to mark the termination of the passage. Here two more white-, or rather yellow-robed guards were standing, who also bowed, saluted, and let us pass through heavy curtains into a great antechamber, quite forty feet long by as many wide, in which some eight or ten yellow-haired women, most of them young and handsome, sat on cushions, working with ivory needles at what had the appearance of being embroidery-frames. These women were also deaf and dumb. At the farther end of this great lamp-lit apartment was a second opening, closed in with heavy Oriental-looking tapestries, quite unlike those that hung before the doors of our own rooms, where stood two particularly handsome girl mutes, their heads bowed upon their bosoms and their hands crossed in an attitude of the humblest submission. As we advanced they each stretched out an arm and drew back the curtains. Thereupon Billali did a curious thing. Down he went, that venerable-looking old gentleman—for Billali is a gentleman at the bottom—down on to his hands and knees, and in this undignified position, with his long white beard trailing on the ground, he began to creep into the apartment beyond. I followed him, standing on my feet in the usual fashion. Looking over his shoulder he perceived it.