She
advanced with a lamp to one of the small passages that I had
noticed opening out of the central cave. This we followed for
about five paces, when it suddenly widened out into a small
chamber, about eight feet square, and hewn out of the living
rock. On one side of this chamber was a stone slab, about three
feet from the ground, and running its entire length like a bunk
in a cabin, and on this slab he intimated that I was to sleep.
There was no window or air-hole to the chamber, and no furniture;
and, on looking at it more closely, I came to the disturbing
conclusion (in which, as I afterwards discovered, I was quite
right) that it had originally served for a sepulchre for the dead
rather than a sleeping-place for the living, the slab being
designed to receive the corpse of the departed. The thought made
me shudder in spite of myself; but, seeing that I must sleep
somewhere, I got over the feeling as best I might, and returned
to the cavern to get my blanket, which had been brought up from
the boat with the other things. There I met Job, who, having been
inducted to a similar apartment, had flatly declined to stop in
it, saying that the look of the place gave him the horrors, and
that he might as well be dead and buried in his grandfather’s
brick grave at once, and expressed his determination of sleeping
with me if I would allow him. This, of course, I was only too
glad to do.
The night passed very comfortably on the whole. I say on the
whole, for personally I went through a most horrible nightmare of
being buried alive, induced, no doubt, by the sepulchral nature
of my surroundings. At dawn we were aroused by a loud trumpeting
sound, produced, as we afterwards discovered, by a young
Amahagger blowing through a hole bored in its side into a
hollowed elephant tusk, which was kept for the purpose.
Taking the hint, we got up and went down to the stream to wash,
after which the morning meal was served. At breakfast one of the
women, no longer quite young, advanced and publicly kissed Job. I
think it was in its way the most delightful thing (putting its
impropriety aside for a moment) that I ever saw. Never shall I
forget the respectable Job’s abject terror and disgust. Job, like
myself, is a bit of a misogynist—I fancy chiefly owing to the
fact of his having been one of a family of seventeen—and the
feelings expressed upon his countenance when he realised that he
was not only being embraced publicly, and without authorisation
on his own part, but also in the presence of his masters, were
too mixed and painful to admit of accurate description. He sprang
to his feet, and pushed the woman, a buxom person of about
thirty, from him.
“Well, I never!” he gasped, whereupon probably thinking that he
was only coy, she embraced him again.
“Be off with you! Get away, you minx!” he shouted, waving the
wooden spoon, with which he was eating his breakfast, up and down
before the lady’s face. “Beg your pardon, gentlemen, I am sure I
haven’t encouraged her. Oh, Lord! she’s coming for me again. Hold
her, Mr. Holly! please hold her! I can’t stand it; I can’t,
indeed. This has never happened to me before, gentlemen, never.
There’s nothing against my character,” and here he broke off, and
ran as hard as he could go down the cave, and for once I saw the
Amahagger laugh. As for the woman, however, she did not laugh. On
the contrary, she seemed to bristle with fury, which the mockery
of the other women about only served to intensify. She stood
there literally snarling and shaking with indignation, and,
seeing her, I wished Job’s scruples had been at Jericho, forming
a shrewd guess that his admirable behaviour had endangered our
throats. Nor, as the sequel shows, was I wrong.
The lady having retreated, Job returned in a great state of
nervousness, and keeping his weather eye fixed upon every woman
who came near him. I took an opportunity to explain to our hosts
that Job was a married man, and had had very unhappy experiences
in his domestic relations, which accounted for his presence here
and his terror at the sight of women, but my remarks were
received in grim silence, it being evident that our retainer’s
behaviour was considered as a slight to the “household” at large,
although the women, after the manner of some of their most
civilised sisters, made merry at the rebuff of their companion.
After breakfast we took a walk and inspected the Amahagger herds,
and also their cultivated lands. They have two breeds of cattle,
one large and angular, with no horns, but yielding beautiful
milk; and the other, a red breed, very small and fat, excellent
for meat, but of no value for milking purposes. This last breed
closely resembles the Norfolk red-pole strain, only it has horns
which generally curve forward over the head, sometimes to such an
extent that they have to be cut to prevent them from growing into
the bones of the skull. The goats are long-haired, and are used
for eating only, at least I never saw them milked. As for the
Amahagger cultivation, it is primitive in the extreme, being all
done by means of a spade made of iron, for these people smelt and
work iron. This spade is shaped more like a big spear-head than
anything else, and has no shoulder to it on which the foot can be
set. As a consequence, the labour of digging is very great. It
is, however, all done by the men, the women, contrary to the
habits of most savage races, being entirely exempt from manual
toil. But then, as I think I have said elsewhere, among the
Amahagger the weaker sex has established its rights.
At first we were much puzzled as to the origin and constitution
of this extraordinary race, points upon which they were
singularly uncommunicative. As the time went on—for the next four
days passed without any striking event—we learnt something from
Leo’s lady friend Ustane, who, by the way, stuck to that young
gentleman like his own shadow. As to origin, they had none, at
least, so far as she was aware. There were, however, she informed
us, mounds of masonry and many pillars, near the place where
_She_ lived, which was called Kôr, and which the wise said had
once been houses wherein men lived, and it was suggested that
they were descended from these men. No one, however, dared go
near these great ruins, because they were haunted: they only
looked on them from a distance. Other similar ruins were to be
seen, she had heard, in various parts of the country, that is,
wherever one of the mountains rose above the level of the swamp.
Also the caves in which they lived had been hollowed out of the
rocks by men, perhaps the same who built the cities. They
themselves had no written laws, only custom, which was, however,
quite as binding as law. If any man offended against the custom,
he was put to death by order of the Father of the “Household.” I
asked how he was put to death, and she only smiled and said that
I might see one day soon.
They had a Queen, however. _She_ was their Queen, but she was
very rarely seen, perhaps once in two or three years, when she
came forth to pass sentence on some offenders, and when seen was
muffled up in a big cloak, so that nobody could look upon her
face. Those who waited upon her were deaf and dumb, and therefore
could tell no tales, but it was reported that she was lovely as
no other woman was lovely, or ever had been. It was rumoured also
that she was immortal, and had power over all things, but she,
Ustane, could say nothing of all that. What she believed was that
the Queen chose a husband from time to time, and as soon as a
female child was born, this husband, who was never again seen,
was put to death. Then the female child grew up and took the
place of the Queen when its mother died, and had been buried in
the great caves. But of these matters none could speak with
certainty. Only _She_ was obeyed throughout the length and
breadth of the land, and to question her command was instant
death. She kept a guard, but had no regular army, and to disobey
her was to die.
I asked what size the land was, and how many people lived in it.
She answered that there were ten “Households,” like this that she
knew of, including the big “Household,” where the Queen was, that
all the “Households” lived in caves, in places resembling this
stretch of raised country, dotted about in a vast extent of
swamp, which was only to be threaded by secret paths. Often the
“Households” made war on each other until _She_ sent word that it
was to stop, and then they instantly ceased. That and the fever
which they caught in crossing the swamps prevented their numbers
from increasing too much. They had no connection with any other
race, indeed none lived near them, or were able to thread the
vast swamps. Once an army from the direction of the great river
(presumably the Zambesi) had attempted to attack them, but they
got lost in the marshes, and at night, seeing the great balls of
fire that move about there, tried to come to them, thinking that
they marked the enemy camp, and half of them were drowned. As for
the rest, they soon died of fever and starvation, not a blow
being struck at them. The marshes, she told us, were absolutely
impassable except to those who knew the paths, adding, what I
could well believe, that we should never have reached this place
where we then were had we not been brought thither.
These and many other things we learnt from Ustane during the four
days’ pause before our real adventures began, and, as may be
imagined, they gave us considerable cause for thought. The whole
thing was exceedingly remarkable, almost incredibly so, indeed,
and the oddest part of it was that so far it did more or less
correspond to the ancient writing on the sherd. And now it
appeared that there was a mysterious Queen clothed by rumour with
dread and wonderful attributes, and commonly known by the
impersonal, but, to my mind, rather awesome title of _She_.
Altogether, I could not make it out, nor could Leo, though of
course he was exceedingly triumphant over me because I had
persistently mocked at the whole thing. As for Job, he had long
since abandoned any attempt to call his reason his own, and left
it to drift upon the sea of circumstance. Mahomed, the Arab, who
was, by the way, treated civilly indeed, but with chilling
contempt, by the Amahagger, was, I discovered, in a great fright,
though I could not quite make out what he was frightened about.
He would sit crouched up in a corner of the cave all day long,
calling upon Allah and the Prophet to protect him. When I pressed
him about it, he said that he was afraid because these people
were not men or women at all, but devils, and that this was an
enchanted land; and, upon my word, once or twice since then I
have been inclined to agree with him. And so the time went on,