She
attend to. Myself, considering the matter by the light of what we
afterwards saw, I believe that it was fashioned by man, but
whether or not this is so, there it stands, and sullenly stares
from age to age out across the changing sea—there it stood two
thousand years and more ago, when Amenartas, the Egyptian
princess, and the wife of Leo’s remote ancestor Kallikrates,
gazed upon its devilish face—and there I have no doubt it will
still stand when as many centuries as are numbered between her
day and our own are added to the year that bore us to oblivion.
“What do you think of that, Job?” I asked of our retainer, who
was sitting on the edge of the boat, trying to get as much
sunshine as possible, and generally looking uncommonly wretched,
and I pointed to the fiery and demoniacal head.
“Oh Lord, sir,” answered Job, who now perceived the object for
the first time, “I think that the old gentleman must have been
sitting for his portrait on them rocks.”
I laughed, and the laugh woke up Leo.
“Hullo,” he said, “what’s the matter with me? I am all
stiff—where is the dhow? Give me some brandy, please.”
“You may be thankful that you are not stiffer, my boy,” I
answered. “The dhow is sunk, everybody on board her is drowned
with the exception of us four, and your own life was only saved
by a miracle”; and whilst Job, now that it was light enough,
searched about in a locker for the brandy for which Leo asked, I
told him the history of our night’s adventure.
“Great Heavens!” he said faintly; “and to think that we should
have been chosen to live through it!”
By this time the brandy was forthcoming, and we all had a good
pull at it, and thankful enough we were for it. Also the sun was
beginning to get strength, and warm our chilled bones, for we had
been wet through for five hours or more.
“Why,” said Leo, with a gasp as he put down the brandy bottle,
“there is the head the writing talks of, the ‘rock carven like
the head of an Ethiopian.’”
“Yes,” I said, “there it is.”
“Well, then,” he answered, “the whole thing is true.”
“I don’t see at all that that follows,” I answered. “We knew this
head was here: your father saw it. Very likely it is not the same
head that the writing talks of; or if it is, it proves nothing.”
Leo smiled at me in a superior way. “You are an unbelieving Jew,
Uncle Horace,” he said. “Those who live will see.”
“Exactly so,” I answered, “and now perhaps you will observe that
we are drifting across a sandbank into the mouth of the river.
Get hold of your oar, Job, and we will row in and see if we can
find a place to land.”
The river mouth which we were entering did not appear to be a very wide
one, though as yet the long banks of steaming mist that clung about its
shores had not lifted sufficiently to enable us to see its exact
measure. There was, as is the case with nearly every East African
river, a considerable bar at the mouth, which, no doubt, when the wind
was on shore and the tide running out, was absolutely impassable even
for a boat drawing only a few inches. But as things were it was
manageable enough, and we did not ship a cupful of water. In twenty
minutes we were well across it, with but slight assistance from
ourselves, and being carried by a strong though somewhat variable
breeze well up the harbour. By this time the mist was being sucked up
by the sun, which was getting uncomfortably hot, and we saw that the
mouth of the little estuary was here about half a mile across, and that
the banks were very marshy, and crowded with crocodiles lying about on
the mud like logs. About a mile ahead of us, however, was what appeared
to be a strip of firm land, and for this we steered. In another quarter
of an hour we were there, and making the boat fast to a beautiful tree
with broad shining leaves, and flowers of the magnolia species, only
they were rose-coloured and not white,[1] which hung over the water, we
disembarked. This done we undressed, washed ourselves, and spread our
clothes, together with the contents of the boat, in the sun to dry,
which they very quickly did. Then, taking shelter from the sun under
some trees, we made a hearty breakfast off a “Paysandu” potted tongue,
of which we had brought a good quantity with us, congratulating
ourselves loudly on our good fortune in having loaded and provisioned
the boat on the previous day before the hurricane destroyed the dhow.
By the time that we had finished our meal our clothes were quite dry,
and we hastened to get into them, feeling not a little refreshed.
Indeed, with the exception of weariness and a few bruises, none of us
were the worse for the terrifying adventure which had been fatal to all
our companions. Leo, it is true, had been half-drowned, but that is no
great matter to a vigorous young athlete of five-and-twenty.
[1] There is a known species of magnolia with pink flowers. It is
indigenous in Sikkim, and known as _Magnolia Campbellii_.—Editor.
After breakfast we started to look about us. We were on a strip
of dry land about two hundred yards broad by five hundred long,
bordered on one side by the river, and on the other three by
endless desolate swamps, that stretched as far as the eye could
reach. This strip of land was raised about twenty-five feet above
the plain of the surrounding swamps and the river level: indeed
it had every appearance of having been made by the hand of man.
“This place has been a wharf,” said Leo, dogmatically.
“Nonsense,” I answered. “Who would be stupid enough to build a
wharf in the middle of these dreadful marshes in a country
inhabited by savages—that is, if it is inhabited at all?”
“Perhaps it was not always marsh, and perhaps the people were not
always savage,” he said drily, looking down the steep bank, for
we were standing by the river. “Look there,” he went on, pointing
to a spot where the hurricane of the previous night had torn up
one of the magnolia trees by the roots, which had grown on the
extreme edge of the bank just where it sloped down to the water,
and lifted a large cake of earth with them. “Is not that
stonework? If not, it is very like it.”
“Nonsense,” I said again, but we clambered down to the spot, and
got between the upturned roots and the bank.
“Well?” he said.
But I did not answer this time. I only whistled. For there, laid
bare by the removal of the earth, was an undoubted facing of
solid stone laid in large blocks and bound together with brown
cement, so hard that I could make no impression on it with the
file in my shooting-knife. Nor was this all; seeing something
projecting through the soil at the bottom of the bared patch of
walling, I removed the loose earth with my hands, and revealed a
huge stone ring, a foot or more in diameter, and about three
inches thick. This fairly staggered me.
“Looks rather like a wharf where good-sized vessels have been
moored, does it not, Uncle Horace?” said Leo, with an excited
grin.
I tried to say “Nonsense” again, but the word stuck in my
throat—the ring spoke for itself. In some past age vessels _had_
been moored there, and this stone wall was undoubtedly the
remnant of a solidly constructed wharf. Probably the city to
which it had belonged lay buried beneath the swamp behind it.
“Begins to look as though there were something in the story after
all, Uncle Horace,” said the exultant Leo; and reflecting on the
mysterious negro’s head and the equally mysterious stonework, I
made no direct reply.
“A country like Africa,” I said, “is sure to be full of the relics of
long dead and forgotten civilisations. Nobody knows the age of the
Egyptian civilisation, and very likely it had offshoots. Then there
were the Babylonians and the Phœnicians, and the Persians, and all
manner of people, all more or less civilised, to say nothing of the
Jews whom everybody ‘wants’ nowadays. It is possible that they, or any
one of them, may have had colonies or trading stations about here.
Remember those buried Persian cities that the consul showed us at
Kilwa.”[2]
[2] Near Kilwa, on the East Coast of Africa, about 400 miles south of
Zanzibar, is a cliff which has been recently washed by the waves. On
the top of this cliff are Persian tombs known to be at least seven
centuries old by the dates still legible upon them. Beneath these
tombs is a layer of _débris_ representing a city. Farther down the
cliff is a second layer representing an older city, and farther down
still a third layer, the remains of yet another city of vast and
unknown antiquity. Beneath the bottom city were recently found some
specimens of glazed earthenware, such as are occasionally to be met
with on that coast to this day. I believe that they are now in the
possession of Sir John Kirk.—Editor.
“Quite so,” said Leo, “but that is not what you said before.”
“Well, what is to be done now?” I asked, turning the
conversation.
As no answer was forthcoming we walked to the edge of the swamp,
and looked over it. It was apparently boundless, and vast flocks
of every sort of waterfowl flew from its recesses, till it was
sometimes difficult to see the sky. Now that the sun was getting
high it drew thin sickly looking clouds of poisonous vapour from
the surface of the marsh and from the scummy pools of stagnant
water.
“Two things are clear to me,” I said, addressing my three
companions, who stared at this spectacle in dismay: “first, that
we can’t go across there” (I pointed to the swamp), “and,
secondly, that if we stop here we shall certainly die of fever.”
“That’s as clear as a haystack, sir,” said Job.
“Very well, then; there are two alternatives before us. One is to
‘bout ship, and try and run for some port in the whale-boat,
which would be a sufficiently risky proceeding, and the other to
sail or row on up the river, and see where we come to.”
“I don’t know what you are going to do,” said Leo, setting his
mouth, “but I am going up that river.”
Job turned up the whites of his eyes and groaned, and the Arab
murmured “Allah,” and groaned also. As for me, I remarked sweetly
that as we seemed to be between the devil and the deep sea, it
did not much matter where we went. But in reality I was as
anxious to proceed as Leo. The colossal negro’s head and the
stone wharf had excited my curiosity to an extent of which I was
secretly ashamed, and I was prepared to gratify it at any cost.
Accordingly, having carefully fitted the mast, restowed the boat,
and got out our rifles, we embarked. Fortunately the wind was
blowing on shore from the ocean, so we were able to hoist the
sail. Indeed, we afterwards found out that as a general rule the
wind set on shore from daybreak for some hours, and off shore
again at sunset, and the explanation that I offer of this is,
that when the earth is cooled by the dew and the night the hot
air rises, and the draught rushes in from the sea till the sun
has once more heated it through. At least that appeared to be the
rule here.
Taking advantage of this favouring wind, we sailed merrily up the