She
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 an instrument resembling a lyre, while
near the foot of the corpse stood a man holding a sheet, with
which he was preparing 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. They struck me also as being of surpassing interest as
representing, probably with studious accuracy, the last 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 it would
obviously have been quite impossible for me to have invented it.
To return. As soon as I had hastily examined these sculptures,
which I think I omitted to mention were 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 Leo was getting on,
Billali saying that he must now wait upon _She_, and hear her
commands. On reaching Leo’s room we found the poor boy in a very
bad way. He had woke up from his torpor, and was altogether off
his head, babbling about some boat-race on the Cam, and was
inclined to be violent. 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 any rate I
know that it was getting so dark that I could only just make out
his head lying like a gleam of gold upon the pillow 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
fact was that I did not feel overwhelmed with gratitude at the
prospect of seeing 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 did so 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 is “Suten se Ra,” or
“Royal Son of the Sun.” The 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 picked up. 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 get lost, I slipped it
on 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
leaders of the troop that had met us had done with their ivory
wands. We stepped between them, and found ourselves in an exactly
similar gallery to that which led to our own apartments, only
this passage was, comparatively speaking, brilliantly lighted. A
few paces down it we were met by four mutes—two men and two
women—who bowed low and then arranged 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 leading to our own quarters, and which I
afterwards found opened out 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, and they too
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 women, most of them young and handsome,
with yellowish hair, 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 another doorway closed in with heavy
Oriental-looking curtains, quite unlike those that hung before
the doors of our own rooms, and here stood two particularly
handsome girl mutes, their heads bowed upon their bosoms and
their hands crossed in an attitude of humble 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.
“Down, my son; down, my Baboon; down on to thy hands and knees.
We enter the presence of _She_, and, if thou art not humble, of a
surety she will blast thee where thou standest.”
I halted, and felt scared. Indeed, my knees began to give way of
their own mere motion; but reflection came to my aid. I was an
Englishman, and why, I asked myself, should I creep into the
presence of some savage woman as though I were a monkey in fact
as well as in name? I would not and could not do it, that is,
unless I was absolutely sure that my life or comfort depended
upon it. If once I began to creep upon my knees I should always
have to do so, and it would be a patent acknowledgment of
inferiority. So, fortified by an insular prejudice against
“kootooing,” which has, like most of our so-called prejudices, a
good deal of common sense to recommend it, I marched in boldly
after Billali. I found myself in another apartment, considerably
smaller than the anteroom, of which the walls were entirely hung
with rich-looking curtains of the same make as those over the
door, the work, as I subsequently discovered, of the mutes who
sat in the antechamber and wove them in strips, which were
afterwards sewn together. Also, here and there about the room,
were settees of a beautiful black wood of the ebony tribe, inlaid
with ivory, and all over the floor were other tapestries, or
rather rugs. At the top end of this apartment was what appeared
to be a recess, also draped with curtains, through which shone
rays of light. There was nobody in the place except ourselves.
Painfully and slowly old Billali crept up the length of the cave,
and with the most dignified stride that I could command I
followed after him. But I felt that it was more or less of a
failure. To begin with, it is not possible to look dignified when
you are following in the wake of an old man writhing along on his
stomach like a snake, and then, in order to go sufficiently
slowly, either I had to keep my leg some seconds in the air at
every step, or else to advance with a full stop between each
stride, like Mary Queen of Scots going to execution in a play.
Billali was not good at crawling, I suppose his years stood in
the way, and our progress up that apartment was a very long
affair. I was immediately behind him, and several times I was
sorely tempted to help him on with a good kick. It is so absurd
to advance into the presence of savage royalty after the fashion
of an Irishman driving a pig to market, for that is what we
looked like, and the idea nearly made me burst out laughing then
and there. I had to work off my dangerous tendency to unseemly
merriment by blowing my nose, a proceeding which filled old
Billali with horror, for he looked over his shoulder and made a
ghastly face at me, and I heard him murmur, “Oh, my poor Baboon!”
At last we reached the curtains, and here Billali collapsed flat
on to his stomach, with his hands stretched out before him as
though he were dead, and I, not knowing what to do, began to
stare about the place. But presently I clearly felt that somebody
was looking at me from behind the curtains. I could not see the
person, but I could distinctly feel his or her gaze, and, what is
more, it produced a very odd effect upon my nerves. I was
frightened, I do not know why. The place was a strange one, it is
true, and looked lonely, notwithstanding its rich hangings and
the soft glow of the lamps—indeed, these accessories added to,
rather than detracted from its loneliness, just as a lighted
street at night has always a more solitary appearance than a dark
one. It was so silent in the place, and there lay Billali like
one dead before the heavy curtains, through which the odour of
perfume seemed to float up towards the gloom of the arched roof
above. Minute grew into minute, and still there was no sign of
life, nor did the curtain move; but I felt the gaze of the
unknown being sinking through and through me, and filling me with
a nameless terror, till the perspiration stood in beads upon my
brow.
At length the curtain began to move. Who could be behind it?—some
naked savage queen, a languishing Oriental beauty, or a
nineteenth-century young lady, drinking afternoon tea? I had not
the slightest idea, and should not have been astonished at seeing
any of the three. I was getting beyond astonishment. The curtain
agitated itself a little, then suddenly between its folds there
appeared a most beautiful white hand (white as snow), and with
long tapering fingers, ending in the pinkest nails. The hand
grasped the curtain, and drew it aside, and as it did so I heard
a voice, I think the softest and yet most silvery voice I ever
heard. It reminded me of the murmur of a brook.
“Stranger,” said the voice in Arabic, but much purer and more
classical Arabic than the Amahagger talk—“stranger, wherefore art
thou so much afraid?”
Now I flattered myself that in spite of my inward terrors I had
kept a very fair command of my countenance, and was, therefore, a