King Solomon's Mines
old-world labourer in the mine. This work of art was executed at the
natural height at which an idle fellow, be he Phoenician workman or
British cad, is in the habit of trying to immortalise himself at the
expense of nature’s masterpieces, namely, about five feet from the
ground. Yet at the time that we saw it, which _must_ have been nearly
three thousand years after the date of the execution of the carving,
the column was only eight feet high, and was still in process of
formation, which gives a rate of growth of a foot to a thousand years,
or an inch and a fraction to a century. This we knew because, as we
were standing by it, we heard a drop of water fall.
Sometimes the stalagmites took strange forms, presumably where the
dropping of the water had not always been on the same spot. Thus, one
huge mass, which must have weighed a hundred tons or so, was in the
shape of a pulpit, beautifully fretted over outside with a design that
looked like lace. Others resembled strange beasts, and on the sides of
the cave were fanlike ivory tracings, such as the frost leaves upon a
pane.
Out of the vast main aisle there opened here and there smaller caves,
exactly, Sir Henry said, as chapels open out of great cathedrals. Some
were large, but one or two—and this is a wonderful instance of how
nature carries out her handiwork by the same unvarying laws, utterly
irrespective of size—were tiny. One little nook, for instance, was no
larger than an unusually big doll’s house, and yet it might have been a
model for the whole place, for the water dropped, tiny icicles hung,
and spar columns were forming in just the same way.
We had not, however, enough time to examine this beautiful cavern so
thoroughly as we should have liked to do, since unfortunately, Gagool
seemed to be indifferent as to stalactites, and only anxious to get her
business over. This annoyed me the more, as I was particularly anxious
to discover, if possible, by what system the light was admitted into
the cave, and whether it was by the hand of man or by that of nature
that this was done; also if the place had been used in any way in
ancient times, as seemed probable. However, we consoled ourselves with
the idea that we would investigate it thoroughly on our way back, and
followed on at the heels of our uncanny guide.
On she led us, straight to the top of the vast and silent cave, where
we found another doorway, not arched as the first was, but square at
the top, something like the doorways of Egyptian temples.
“Are ye prepared to enter the Place of Death, white men?” asked Gagool,
evidently with a view to making us feel uncomfortable.
“Lead on, Macduff,” said Good solemnly, trying to look as though he was
not at all alarmed, as indeed we all did except Foulata, who caught
Good by the arm for protection.
“This is getting rather ghastly,” said Sir Henry, peeping into the dark
passageway. “Come on, Quatermain—_seniores priores_. We mustn’t keep
the old lady waiting!” and he politely made way for me to lead the van,
for which inwardly I did not bless him.
_Tap, tap,_ went old Gagool’s stick down the passage, as she trotted
along, chuckling hideously; and still overcome by some unaccountable
presentiment of evil, I hung back.
“Come, get on, old fellow,” said Good, “or we shall lose our fair
guide.”
Thus adjured, I started down the passage, and after about twenty paces
found myself in a gloomy apartment some forty feet long, by thirty
broad, and thirty high, which in some past age evidently had been
hollowed, by hand-labour, out of the mountain. This apartment was not
nearly so well lighted as the vast stalactite ante-cave, and at the
first glance all I could discern was a massive stone table running down
its length, with a colossal white figure at its head, and life-sized
white figures all round it. Next I discovered a brown thing, seated on
the table in the centre, and in another moment my eyes grew accustomed
to the light, and I saw what all these things were, and was tailing out
of the place as hard as my legs could carry me.
I am not a nervous man in a general way, and very little troubled with
superstitions, of which I have lived to see the folly; but I am free to
own that this sight quite upset me, and had it not been that Sir Henry
caught me by the collar and held me, I do honestly believe that in
another five minutes I should have been outside the stalactite cave,
and that a promise of all the diamonds in Kimberley would not have
induced me to enter it again. But he held me tight, so I stopped
because I could not help myself. Next second, however, _his_ eyes
became accustomed to the light, and he let go of me, and began to mop
the perspiration off his forehead. As for Good, he swore feebly, while
Foulata threw her arms round his neck and shrieked.
Only Gagool chuckled loud and long.
It _was_ a ghastly sight. There at the end of the long stone table,
holding in his skeleton fingers a great white spear, sat _Death_
himself, shaped in the form of a colossal human skeleton, fifteen feet
or more in height. High above his head he held the spear, as though in
the act to strike; one bony hand rested on the stone table before him,
in the position a man assumes on rising from his seat, whilst his frame
was bent forward so that the vertebræ of the neck and the grinning,
gleaming skull projected towards us, and fixed its hollow eye-places
upon us, the jaws a little open, as though it were about to speak.
“Great heavens!” said I faintly, at last, “what can it be?”
“And what are _those things_?” asked Good, pointing to the white
company round the table.
“And what on earth is _that thing_?” said Sir Henry, pointing to the
brown creature seated on the table.
“_Hee! hee! hee!_” laughed Gagool. “To those who enter the Hall of the
Dead, evil comes. _Hee! hee! hee! ha! ha!_”
“Come, Incubu, brave in battle, come and see him thou slewest;” and the
old creature caught Curtis’ coat in her skinny fingers, and led him
away towards the table. We followed.
Presently she stopped and pointed at the brown object seated on the
table. Sir Henry looked, and started back with an exclamation; and no
wonder, for there, quite naked, the head which Curtis’ battle-axe had
shorn from the body resting on its knees, was the gaunt corpse of
Twala, the last king of the Kukuanas. Yes, there, the head perched upon
the knees, it sat in all its ugliness, the vertebræ projecting a full
inch above the level of the shrunken flesh of the neck, for all the
world like a black double of Hamilton Tighe.[11] Over the surface of
the corpse there was gathered a thin glassy film, that made its
appearance yet more appalling, for which we were, at the moment, quite
unable to account, till presently we observed that from the roof of the
chamber the water fell steadily, _drip! drop! drip!_ on to the neck of
the corpse, whence it ran down over the entire surface, and finally
escaped into the rock through a tiny hole in the table. Then I guessed
what the film was—_Twala’s body was being transformed into a
stalactite._
[11] “Now haste ye, my handmaidens, haste and see
How he sits there and glowers with his head on his knee.”
A look at the white forms seated on the stone bench which ran round
that ghastly board confirmed this view. They were human bodies indeed,
or rather they had been human; now they were _stalactites_. This was
the way in which the Kukuana people had from time immemorial preserved
their royal dead. They petrified them. What the exact system might be,
if there was any, beyond the placing of them for a long period of years
under the drip, I never discovered, but there they sat, iced over and
preserved for ever by the siliceous fluid.
Anything more awe-inspiring than the spectacle of this long line of
departed royalties (there were twenty-seven of them, the last being
Ignosi’s father), wrapped, each of them, in a shroud of ice-like spar,
through which the features could be dimly discovered, and seated round
that inhospitable board, with Death himself for a host, it is
impossible to imagine. That the practice of thus preserving their kings
must have been an ancient one is evident from the number, which,
allowing for an average reign of fifteen years, supposing that every
king who reigned was placed here—an improbable thing, as some are sure
to have perished in battle far from home—would fix the date of its
commencement at four and a quarter centuries back.
But the colossal Death, who sits at the head of the board, is far older
than that, and, unless I am much mistaken, owes his origin to the same
artist who designed the three Colossi. He is hewn out of a single
stalactite, and, looked at as a work of art, is most admirably
conceived and executed. Good, who understands such things, declared
that, so far as he could see, the anatomical design of the skeleton is
perfect down to the smallest bones.
My own idea is, that this terrific object was a freak of fancy on the
part of some old-world sculptor, and that its presence had suggested to
the Kukuanas the idea of placing their royal dead under its awful
presidency. Or perhaps it was set there to frighten away any marauders
who might have designs upon the treasure chamber beyond. I cannot say.
All I can do is to describe it as it is, and the reader must form his
own conclusion.
Such, at any rate, was the White Death and such were the White Dead!
CHAPTER XVII.
SOLOMON’S TREASURE CHAMBER
While we were engaged in recovering from our fright, and in examining
the grisly wonders of the Place of Death, Gagool had been differently
occupied. Somehow or other—for she was marvellously active when she
chose—she had scrambled on to the great table, and made her way to
where our departed friend Twala was placed, under the drip, to see,
suggested Good, how he was “pickling,” or for some dark purpose of her
own. Then, after bending down to kiss his icy lips as though in
affectionate greeting, she hobbled back, stopping now and again to
address the remark, the tenor of which I could not catch, to one or
other of the shrouded forms, just as you or I might welcome an old
acquaintance. Having gone through this mysterious and horrible
ceremony, she squatted herself down on the table immediately under the
White Death, and began, so far as I could make out, to offer up
prayers. The spectacle of this wicked creature pouring out
supplications, evil ones no doubt, to the arch enemy of mankind, was so
uncanny that it caused us to hasten our inspection.
“Now, Gagool,” said I, in a low voice—somehow one did not dare to speak
above a whisper in that place—“lead us to the chamber.”
The old witch promptly scrambled down from the table.
“My lords are not afraid?” she said, leering up into my face.
“Lead on.”
“Good, my lords;” and she hobbled round to the back of the great Death.
“Here is the chamber; let my lords light the lamp, and enter,” and she
placed the gourd full of oil upon the floor, and leaned herself against
the side of the cave. I took out a match, of which we had still a few
in a box, and lit a rush wick, and then looked for the doorway, but
there was nothing before us except the solid rock. Gagool grinned. “The
way is there, my lords. _Ha! ha! ha!_”
“Do not jest with us,” I said sternly.
“I jest not, my lords. See!” and she pointed at the rock.
As she did so, on holding up the lamp we perceived that a mass of stone
was rising slowly from the floor and vanishing into the rock above,
where doubtless there is a cavity prepared to receive it. The mass was
of the width of a good-sized door, about ten feet high and not less
than five feet thick. It must have weighed at least twenty or thirty
tons, and was clearly moved upon some simple balance principle of