She
another, like a heap of slain.
[1] For a long while it puzzled me to know what could have been done
with the enormous quantities of rock that must have been dug out of
these vast caves; but I afterwards discovered that it was for the most
part built into the walls and palaces of Kôr, and also used to line
the reservoirs and sewers.—L. H. H.
Leo was of course intensely interested in this stupendous and
unequalled sight, which was, indeed, enough to awake all the
imagination a man had in him into the most active life. But to
poor Job it did not prove attractive. His nerves—already
seriously shaken by what he had undergone since we had arrived in
this terrible country—were, as may be imagined, still further
disturbed by the spectacle of these masses of departed humanity,
whereof the forms still remained perfect before his eyes, though
their voices were for ever lost in the eternal silence of the
tomb. Nor was he comforted when old Billali, by way of soothing
his evident agitation, informed him that he should not be
frightened of these dead things, as he would soon be like them
himself.
“There’s a nice thing to say of a man, sir,” he ejaculated, when
I translated this little remark; “but there, what can one expect
of an old man-eating savage? Not but what I dare say he’s right,”
and Job sighed.
When we had finished inspecting the caves, we returned and had
our meal, for it was now past four in the afternoon, and we
all—especially Leo—needed some food and rest. At six o’clock we,
together with Job, waited on Ayesha, who set to work to terrify
our poor servant still further by showing him pictures on the
pool of water in the font-like vessel. She learnt from me that he
was one of seventeen children, and then bid him think of all his
brothers and sisters, or as many of them as he could, gathered
together in his father’s cottage. Then she told him to look in
the water, and there, reflected from its stilly surface, was that
dead scene of many years gone by, as it was recalled to our
retainer’s brain. Some of the faces were clear enough, but some
were mere blurs and splotches, or with one feature grossly
exaggerated; the fact being that, in these instances, Job had
been unable to recall the exact appearances of the individuals,
or remembered them only by a peculiarity of his tribe, and the
water could only reflect what he saw with his mind’s eye. For it
must be remembered that _She’s_ power in this matter was strictly
limited; she could apparently, except in very rare instances,
only photograph upon the water what was actually in the mind of
some one present, and then only by his will. But, if she was
personally acquainted with a locality, she could, as in the case
of ourselves and the whale-boat, throw its reflection upon the
water, and also, it seems, the reflection of anything extraneous
that was passing there at the time. This power, however, did not
extend to the minds of others. For instance, she could show me
the interior of my college chapel, as I remembered it, but not as
it was at the moment of reflection; for, where other people were
concerned, her art was strictly limited to the facts or memories
present to _their_ consciousness at the moment. So much was this
so that when we tried, for her amusement, to show her pictures of
noted buildings, such as St. Paul’s or the Houses of Parliament,
the result was most imperfect; for, of course, though we had a
good general idea of their appearance, we could not recall all
the architectural details, and therefore the minutiæ necessary to
a perfect reflection were wanting. But Job could not be got to
understand this, and, so far from accepting a natural explanation
of the matter, which was after all, though strange enough in all
conscience, nothing more than an instance of glorified and
perfected telepathy, he set the whole thing down as a
manifestation of the blackest magic. I shall never forget the
howl of terror which he uttered when he saw the more or less
perfect portraits of his long-scattered brethren staring at him
from the quiet water, or the merry peal of laughter with which
Ayesha greeted his consternation. As for Leo, he did not
altogether like it either, but ran his fingers through his yellow
curls, and remarked that it gave him the creeps.
After about an hour of this amusement, in the latter part of
which Job did _not_ participate, the mutes by signs indicated
that Billali was waiting for an audience. Accordingly he was told
to “crawl up,” which he did as awkwardly as usual, and announced
that the dance was ready to begin if _She_ and the white
strangers would be pleased to attend. Shortly afterwards we all
rose, and, Ayesha having thrown a dark cloak (the same, by the
way, that she had worn when I saw her cursing by the fire) over
her white wrappings, we started. The dance was to be held in the
open air, on the smooth rocky plateau in front of the great cave,
and thither we made our way. About fifteen paces from the mouth
of the cave we found three chairs placed, and here we sat and
waited, for as yet no dancers were to be seen. The night was
almost, but not quite, dark, the moon not having risen as yet,
which made us wonder how we should be able to see the dancing.
“Thou wilt presently understand,” said Ayesha, with a little
laugh, when Leo asked her; and we certainly did. Scarcely were
the words out of her mouth when from every point we saw dark
forms rushing up, each bearing with him what we at first took to
be an enormous flaming torch. Whatever they were, they were
burning furiously, for the flames stood out a yard or more behind
each bearer. On they came, fifty or more of them, carrying their
flaming burdens and looking like so many devils from hell. Leo
was the first to discover what these burdens were.
“Great heaven!” he said, “they are corpses on fire!”
I stared and stared again—he was perfectly right—the torches that
were to light our entertainment were human mummies from the
caves!
On rushed the bearers of the flaming corpses, and, meeting at a
spot about twenty paces in front of us, built their ghastly
burdens crossways into a huge bonfire. Heavens! how they roared
and flared! No tar barrel could have burnt as those mummies did.
Nor was this all. Suddenly I saw one great fellow seize a flaming
human arm that had fallen from its parent frame, and rush off
into the darkness. Presently he stopped, and a tall streak of
fire shot up into the air, illumining the gloom, and also the
lamp from which it sprang. That lamp was the mummy of a woman
tied to a stout stake let into the rock, and he had fired her
hair. On he went a few paces and touched a second, then a third,
and a fourth, till at last we were surrounded on all three sides
by a great ring of bodies flaring furiously, the material with
which they were preserved having rendered them so inflammable
that the flames would literally spout out of the ears and mouth
in tongues of fire a foot or more in length.
Nero illuminated his gardens with live Christians soaked in tar,
and we were now treated to a similar spectacle, probably for the
first time since his day, only happily our lamps were not living
ones.
But, although this element of horror was fortunately wanting, to
describe the awful and hideous grandeur of the spectacle thus
presented to us is, I feel, so absolutely beyond my poor powers
that I scarcely dare attempt it. To begin with, it appealed to
the moral as well as the physical susceptibilities. There was
something very terrible, and yet very fascinating, about the
employment of the remote dead to illumine the orgies of the
living; in itself the thing was a satire, both on the living and
the dead. Cæsar’s dust—or is it Alexander’s?—may stop a bunghole,
but the functions of these dead Cæsars of the past was to light
up a savage fetish dance. To such base uses may we come, of so
little account may we be in the minds of the eager multitudes
that we shall breed, many of whom, so far from revering our
memory, will live to curse us for begetting them into such a
world of woe.
Then there was the physical side of the spectacle, and a weird
and splendid one it was. Those old citizens of Kôr burnt as, to
judge from their sculptures and inscriptions, they had lived,
very fast, and with the utmost liberality. What is more, there
were plenty of them. As soon as ever a mummy had burnt down to
the ankles, which it did in about twenty minutes, the feet were
kicked away, and another one put in its place. The bonfire was
kept going on the same generous scale, and its flames shot up,
with a hiss and a crackle, twenty or thirty feet into the air,
throwing great flashes of light far out into the gloom, through
which the dark forms of the Amahagger flitted to and fro like
devils replenishing the infernal fires. We all stood and stared
aghast—shocked, and yet fascinated at so strange a spectacle, and
half expecting to see the spirits those flaming forms had once
enclosed come creeping from the shadows to work vengeance on
their desecrators.
“I promised thee a strange sight, my Holly,” laughed Ayesha,
whose nerves alone did not seem to be affected; “and, behold, I
have not failed thee. Also, it hath its lesson. Trust not to the
future, for who knows what the future may bring! Therefore, live
for the day, and endeavour not to escape the dust which seems to
be man’s end. What thinkest thou those long-forgotten nobles and
ladies would have felt had they known that they should one day
flare to light the dance or boil the pot of savages? But see,
here come the dancers; a merry crew—are they not? The stage is
lit—now for the play.”
As she spoke, we perceived two lines of figures, one male and the
other female, to the number of about a hundred, each advancing
round the human bonfire, arrayed only in the usual leopard and
buck skins. They formed up, in perfect silence, in two lines,
facing each other between us and the fire, and then the dance—a
sort of infernal and fiendish cancan—began. To describe it is
quite impossible, but, though there was a good deal of tossing of
legs and double-shuffling, it seemed to our untutored minds to be
more of a play than a dance, and, as usual with this dreadful
people, whose minds seem to have taken their colour from the
caves in which they live, and whose jokes and amusements are
drawn from the inexhaustible stores of preserved mortality with
which they share their homes, the subject appeared to be a most
ghastly one. I know that it represented an attempted murder first
of all, and then the burial alive of the victim and his
struggling from the grave; each act of the abominable drama,
which was carried on in perfect silence, being rounded off and
finished with a furious and most revolting dance round the