XXVIII
OVER THE MOUNTAIN
The next thing I recollect is a feeling of the most dreadful stiffness,and a sort of vague idea passing through my half-awakened brain that Iwas a carpet that had just been beaten. I opened my eyes, and the firstthing they fell on was the venerable countenance of our old friendBillali, who was seated by the side of the improvised bed upon which Iwas sleeping, and thoughtfully stroking his long beard. The sight ofhim at once brought back to my mind a recollection of all that we hadrecently passed through, which was accentuated by the vision of poorLeo lying opposite to me, his face knocked almost to a jelly, and hisbeautiful crowd of curls turned from yellow to white,[*] and I shut myeyes again and groaned.
[*] Curiously enough, Leo's hair has lately been to some extent regaining its colour--that is to say, it is now a yellowish grey, and I am not without hopes that it will in time come quite right.--L. H. H.
Thou hast slept long, my Baboon, said old Billali.
How long, my father? I asked.
A round of the sun and a round of the moon, a day and a night hast thouslept, and the Lion also. See, he sleepeth yet.
Blessed is sleep, I answered, for it swallows up recollection.
Tell me, he said, what hath befallen you, and what is this strangestory of the death of Her who dieth not. Bethink thee, my son: if thisbe true, then is thy danger and the danger of the Lion very great--nay,almost is the pot red wherewith ye shall be potted, and the stomachs ofthose who shall eat ye are already hungry for the feast. Knowest thounot that these Amahagger, my children, these dwellers in the caves,hate ye? They hate ye as strangers, they hate ye more because of theirbrethren whom _She_ put to the torment for your sake. Assuredly, if oncethey learn that there is naught to fear from Hiya, from the terribleOne-who-must-be-obeyed, they will slay ye by the pot. But let me hearthy tale, my poor Baboon.
Thus adjured, I set to work and told him--not everything, indeed, forI did not think it desirable to do so, but sufficient for my purpose,which was to make him understand that _She_ was really no more, havingfallen into some fire, and, as I put it--for the real thing would havebeen incomprehensible to him--been burnt up. I also told him some of thehorrors we had undergone in effecting our escape, and these produced agreat impression on him. But I clearly saw that he did not believe inthe report of Ayesha's death. He believed indeed that we thoughtthat she was dead, but his explanation was that it had suited her todisappear for a while. Once, he said, in his father's time, she had doneso for twelve years, and there was a tradition in the country that manycenturies back no one had seen her for a whole generation, when shesuddenly reappeared, and destroyed a woman who had assumed the positionof Queen. I said nothing to this, but only shook my head sadly. Alas!I knew too well that Ayesha would appear no more, or at any rate thatBillali would never see her again.
And now, concluded Billali, what wouldst thou do, my Baboon?
Nay, I said, I know not, my father. Can we not escape from thiscountry?
He shook his head.
It is very difficult. By Kôr ye cannot pass, for ye would be seen,and as soon as those fierce ones found that ye were alone, well, andhe smiled significantly, and made a movement as though he were placing ahat on his head. But there is a way over the cliff whereof I once spaketo thee, where they drive the cattle out to pasture. Then beyond thepastures are three days' journey through the marshes, and after thatI know not, but I have heard that seven days' journey from thence isa mighty river, which floweth to the black water. If ye could comethither, perchance ye might escape, but how can ye come thither?
Billali, I said, once, thou knowest, I did save thy life. Now payback the debt, my father, and save me mine and my friend's, the Lion's.It shall be a pleasant thing for thee to think of when thine hour comes,and something to set in the scale against the evil doing of thy days, ifperchance thou hast done any evil. Also, if thou be right, and if _She_doth but hide herself, surely when she comes again she shall rewardthee.
My son the Baboon, answered the old man, think not that I have anungrateful heart. Well do I remember how thou didst rescue me when thosedogs stood by to see me drown. Measure for measure will I give thee,and if thou canst be saved, surely I will save thee. Listen: by dawnto-morrow be prepared, for litters shall be here to bear ye away acrossthe mountains, and through the marshes beyond. This will I do, sayingthat it is the word of _She_ that it be done, and he who obeyeth not theword of _She_ food is he for the hyænas. Then when ye have crossed themarshes, ye must strike with your own hands, so that perchance, if goodfortune go with you, ye may live to come to that black water whereof yetold me. And now, see, the Lion wakes, and ye must eat the food I havemade ready for you.
Leo's condition when once he was fairly aroused proved not to be sobad as might have been expected from his appearance, and we both of usmanaged to eat a hearty meal, which indeed we needed sadly enough. Afterthis we limped down to the spring and bathed, and then came back andslept again till evening, when we once more ate enough for five. Billaliwas away all that day, no doubt making arrangements about litters andbearers, for we were awakened in the middle of the night by the arrivalof a considerable number of men in the little camp.
At dawn the old man himself appeared, and told us that he had by using_She's_ dreadful name, though with some difficulty, succeeded in gettingthe necessary men and two guides to conduct us across the swamps, andthat he urged us to start at once, at the same time announcing hisintention of accompanying us so as to protect us against treachery. Iwas much touched by this act of kindness on the part of that wily oldbarbarian towards two utterly defenceless strangers. A three--or inhis case, for he would have to return, six--days' journey through thosedeadly swamps was no light undertaking for a man of his age, but heconsented to do it cheerfully in order to promote our safety. It showsthat even among those dreadful Amahagger--who are certainly with theirgloom and their devilish and ferocious rites by far the most terriblesavages that I ever heard of--there are people with kindly hearts. Ofcourse, self-interest may have had something to do with it. He may havethought that _She_ would suddenly reappear and demand an account of usat his hands, but still, allowing for all deductions, it was a greatdeal more than we could expect under the circumstances, and I can onlysay that I shall for as long as I live cherish a most affectionateremembrance of my nominal parent, old Billali.
Accordingly, after swallowing some food, we started in the litters,feeling, so far as our bodies went, wonderfully like our old selvesafter our long rest and sleep. I must leave the condition of our mindsto the imagination.
Then came a terrible pull up the cliff. Sometimes the ascent was morenatural, more often it was a zig-zag roadway cut, no doubt, in the firstinstance by the old inhabitants of Kôr. The Amahagger say they drivetheir spare cattle over it once a year to pasture outside; all I know isthat those cattle must be uncommonly active on their feet. Of course thelitters were useless here, so we had to walk.
By midday, however, we reached the great flat top of that mighty wall ofrock, and grand enough the view was from it, with the plain of Kôr, inthe centre of which we could clearly make out the pillared ruins of theTemple of Truth to the one side, and the boundless and melancholy marshon the other. This wall of rock, which had no doubt once formed the lipof the crater, was about a mile and a half thick, and still covered withclinker. Nothing grew there, and the only thing to relieve our eyes wereoccasional pools of rain-water (for rain had lately fallen) whereverthere was a little hollow. Over the flat crest of this mighty rampart wewent, and then came the descent, which, if not so difficult a matteras the getting up, was still sufficiently break-neck, and took us tillsunset. That night, however, we camped in safety upon the mighty slopesthat rolled away to the marsh beneath.
On the following morning, about eleven o'clock, began our dreary journeyacross those awful seas of swamps which I have already described.
For three whole days, through stench and mire, and the all-prevailingflavour of fear, did our bearers struggle along, till at length we cameto open rolling ground quite uncultivated, and mostly treeless, butcovered with game of all sorts, which lies beyond that most desolate,and without guides utterly impracticable, district. And here on thefollowing morning we bade farewell, not without some regret, to oldBillali, who stroked his white beard and solemnly blessed us.
Farewell, my son the Baboon, he said, and farewell to thee too, ohLion. I can do no more to help you. But if ever ye come to your country,be advised, and venture no more into lands that ye know not, lest yecome back no more, but leave your white bones to mark the limit of yourjourneyings. Farewell once more; often shall I think of you, nor wiltthou forget me, my Baboon, for though thy face is ugly thy heart istrue. And then he turned and went, and with him went the tall andsullen-looking bearers, and that was the last that we saw of theAmahagger. We watched them winding away with the empty litters like aprocession bearing dead men from a battle, till the mists from the marshgathered round them and hid them, and then, left utterly desolate in thevast wilderness, we turned and gazed round us and at each other.
Three weeks or so before four men had entered the marshes of Kôr, andnow two of us were dead, and the other two had gone through adventuresand experiences so strange and terrible that death himself hath not amore fearful countenance. Three weeks--and only three weeks! Truly timeshould be measured by events, and not by the lapse of hours. It seemedlike thirty years since we saw the last of our whale-boat.
We must strike out for the Zambesi, Leo, I said, but God knows if weshall ever get there.
Leo nodded. He had become very silent of late, and we started withnothing but the clothes we stood in, a compass, our revolvers andexpress rifles, and about two hundred rounds of ammunition, and so endedthe history of our visit to the ancient ruins of mighty and imperialKôr.
As for the adventures that subsequently befell us, strange and variedas they were, I have, after deliberation, determined not to record themhere. In these pages I have only tried to give a short and clear accountof an occurrence which I believe to be unprecedented, and this I havedone, not with a view to immediate publication, but merely to puton paper while they are yet fresh in our memories the details of ourjourney and its result, which will, I believe, prove interesting tothe world if ever we determine to make them public. This, as at presentadvised, we do not intend should be done during our joint lives.
For the rest, it is of no public interest, resembling as it does theexperience of more than one Central African traveller. Suffice it tosay, that we did, after incredible hardships and privations, reach theZambesi, which proved to be about a hundred and seventy miles southof where Billali left us. There we were for six months imprisoned bya savage tribe, who believed us to be supernatural beings, chiefly onaccount of Leo's youthful face and snow-white hair. From these people weultimately escaped, and, crossing the Zambesi, wandered off southwards,where, when on the point of starvation, we were sufficiently fortunateto fall in with a half-caste Portuguese elephant-hunter who had followeda troop of elephants farther inland than he had ever been before. Thisman treated us most hospitably, and ultimately through his assistancewe, after innumerable sufferings and adventures, reached Delagoa Bay,more than eighteen months from the time when we emerged from the marshesof Kôr, and the very next day managed to catch one of the steamboatsthat run round the Cape to England. Our journey home was a prosperousone, and we set our foot on the quay at Southampton exactly two yearsfrom the date of our departure upon our wild and seemingly ridiculousquest, and I now write these last words with Leo leaning over myshoulder in my old room in my college, the very same into which sometwo-and-twenty years ago my poor friend Vincey came stumbling on thememorable night of his death, bearing the iron chest with him.
And that is the end of this history so far as it concerns science andthe outside world. What its end will be as regards Leo and myself ismore than I can guess at. But we feel that is not reached yet. A storythat began more than two thousand years ago may stretch a long way intothe dim and distant future.
Is Leo really a reincarnation of the ancient Kallikrates of whom theinscription tells? Or was Ayesha deceived by some strange hereditaryresemblance? The reader must form his own opinion on this as on manyother matters. I have mine, which is that she made no such mistake.
Often I sit alone at night, staring with the eyes of the mind into theblackness of unborn time, and wondering in what shape and form the greatdrama will be finally developed, and where the scene of its next actwill be laid. And when that _final_ development ultimately occurs, as Ihave no doubt it must and will occur, in obedience to a fate that neverswerves and a purpose that cannot be altered, what will be the partplayed therein by that beautiful Egyptian Amenartas, the Princess of theroyal race of the Pharaohs, for the love of whom the Priest Kallikratesbroke his vows to Isis, and, pursued by the inexorable vengeance of theoutraged Goddess, fled down the coast of Libya to meet his doom at Kôr?