CHAPTER XVII
THE SANCTUARY AND THE OATH
That evening shortly after sundown the three of us started boldly fromour house wearing over our clothes the Kendah dresses which Ragnall hadbought, and carrying nothing save sticks in our hands, some food andthe lantern in our pockets. On the outskirts of the town we were met bycertain Kendah, one of whom I knew, for I had often ridden by his sideon our march across the desert.
"Have any of you arms upon you, Lord Macumazana?" he asked, lookingcuriously at us and our white robes.
"None," I answered. "Search us if you will."
"Your word is sufficient," he replied with the grave courtesy of hispeople. "If you are unarmed we have orders to let you go where you wishhowever you may be dressed. Yet, Lord," he whispered to me, "I pray youdo not enter the cave, since One lives there who strikes and does notmiss, One whose kiss is death. I pray it for your own sakes, also forours who need you."
"We shall not wake him who sleeps in the cave," I answeredenigmatically, as we departed rejoicing, for now we had learned that theKendah did not yet know of the death of the serpent.
An hour's walk up the hill, guided by Hans, brought us to the mouth ofthe tunnel. To tell the truth I could have wished it had been longer,for as we drew near all sorts of doubts assailed me. What if Hans reallyhad been drinking and invented this story to account for his absence?What if the snake had recovered from a merely temporary indisposition?What if it had a wife and family living in that cave, every one of themthirsting for vengeance?
Well, it was too late to hesitate now, but secretly I hoped that oneof the others would prefer to lead the way. We reached the place andlistened. It was silent as a tomb. Then that brave fellow Hans lit thelantern and said:
"Do you stop here, Baases, while I go to look. If you hear anythinghappen to me, you will have time to run away," words that made me feelsomewhat ashamed of myself.
However, knowing that he was quick as a weasel and silent as a cat,we let him go. A minute or two later suddenly he reappeared out of thedarkness, for he had turned the metal shield over the bull's-eye of thelantern, and even in that light I could see that he was grinning.
"It is all right, Baas," he said. "The Father of Serpents has reallygone to that land whither he sent Bena, where no doubt he is nowroasting in the fires of hell, and I don't see any others. Come and lookat him."
So in we went and there, true enough, upon the floor of the cave lay thehuge reptile stone dead and already much swollen. I don't know how longit was, for part of its body was twisted into coils, so I will only saythat it was by far the most enormous snake that I have ever seen. It istrue that I have heard of such reptiles in different parts ofAfrica, but hitherto I had always put them down as fabulous creaturestransformed into and worshipped as local gods. Also this particularspecimen was, I presume, of a new variety, since, according to Ragnall,it both struck like the cobra or the adder, and crushed like theboa-constrictor. It is possible, however, that he was mistaken on thispoint; I do not know, since I had no time, or indeed inclination, toexamine its head for the poison fangs, and when next I passed that wayit was gone.
I shall never forget the stench of that cave. It was horrible, which isnot to be wondered at seeing that probably this creature had dwelt therefor centuries, since these large snakes are said to be as long lived astortoises, and, being sacred, of course it had never lacked for food.Everywhere lay piles of cast bones, amongst one of which I noticedfragments of a human skull, perhaps that of poor Savage. Also theprojecting rocks in the place were covered with great pieces of snakeskin, doubtless rubbed off by the reptile when once a year it changedits coat.
For a while we gazed at the loathsome and still glittering creature,then pushed on fearful lest we should stumble upon more of its kind.I suppose that it must have been solitary, a kind of serpent rogue,as Jana was an elephant rogue, for we met none and, if the informationwhich I obtained afterwards may be believed, there was no species atall resembling it in the country. What its origin may have been I neverlearned. All the Kendah could or would say about it was that it hadlived in this hole from the beginning and that Black Kendah prisoners,or malefactors, were sometimes given to it to kill, as White Kendahprisoners were given to Jana.
The cave itself proved to be not very long, perhaps one hundred andfifty feet, no more. It was not an artificial but a natural hollow inthe lava rock, which I suppose had once been blown through it by anoutburst of steam. Towards the farther end it narrowed so much that Ibegan to fear there might be no exit. In this I was mistaken, however,for at its termination we found a hole just large enough for a man towalk in upright and so difficult to climb through that it became clearto us that certainly this was not the path by which the White Kendahapproached their sanctuary.
Scrambling out of this aperture with thankfulness, we found ourselvesupon the slope of a kind of huge ditch of lava which ran first downwardsfor about eighty paces, then up again to the base of the great cone ofthe inner mountain which was covered with dense forest.
I presume that the whole formation of this peculiar hill was the resultof a violent volcanic action in the early ages of the earth. But as I donot understand such matters I will not dilate upon them further than tosay that, although comparatively small, it bore a certain resemblanceto other extinct volcanoes which I had met with in different parts ofAfrica.
We climbed down to the bottom of the ditch that from its generalappearance might have been dug out by some giant race as a protection totheir stronghold, and up its farther side to where the forest began ondeep and fertile soil. Why there should have been rich earth here andnone in the ditch is more than we could guess, but perhaps the presenceof springs of water in this part of the mount may have been a cause. Atany rate it was so.
The trees in this forest were huge and of a variety of cedar, but didnot grow closely together; also there was practically no undergrowth,perhaps for the reason that their dense, spreading tops shut out thelight. As I saw afterwards both trunks and boughs were clothed withlong grey moss, which even at midday gave the place a very ghostlyappearance. The darkness beneath those trees was intense, literally wecould not see an inch before our faces. Yet rather than stand still westruggled on, Hans leading the way, for his instincts were quicker thanours. The steep rise of the ground beneath our feet told us that we weregoing uphill, as we wished to do, and from time to time I consulted apocket compass I carried by the light of a match, knowing from previousobservations that the top of the Holy Mount lay due north.
Thus for hour after hour we crept up and on, occasionally butting intothe trunk of a tree or stumbling over a fallen bough, but meeting withno other adventures or obstacles of a physical kind. Of moral, or rathermental, obstacles there were many, since to all of us the atmosphereof this forest was as that of a haunted house. It may have been theembracing darkness, or the sough of the night wind amongst the boughsand mosses, or the sense of the imminent dangers that we had passed andthat still awaited us. Or it may have been unknown horrors connectedwith this place of which some spiritual essence still survived, forwithout doubt localities preserve such influences, which can be felt bythe sensitive among living things, especially in favouring conditions offear and gloom. At any rate I never experienced more subtle and yet morepenetrating terrors than I did upon that night, and afterwards Ragnallconfessed to me that my case was his own. Black as it was I thought thatI saw apparitions, among them glaring eyes and that of the elephantJana standing in front of me with his trunk raised against the bole of acedar. I could have sworn that I saw him, nor was I reassured when Hanswhispered to me below his breath, for here we did not seem to dare toraise our voices:
"Look, Baas. Is it Jana glowing like hot iron who stands yonder?"
"Don't be a fool," I answered. "How can Jana be here and, if he werehere, how could we see him in the night?" But as I said the words Iremembered Harut had told us that Jana had been met with on the HolyMount "in the spirit or in the flesh." However this may be, next
instanthe was gone and we beheld him or his shadow no more. Also we thoughtthat from time to time we heard voices speaking all around us, now here,now there and now in the tree tops above our heads, though what theysaid we could not catch or understand.
Thus the long night wore away. Our progress was very slow, but guided byoccasional glimpses at the compass we never stopped but twice, oncewhen we found ourselves apparently surrounded by tree boles and fallenboughs, and once when we got into swampy ground. Then we took the riskof lighting the lantern, and by its aid picked our way through thesedifficult places. By degrees the trees grew fewer so that we could seethe stars between their tops. This was a help to us as I knew that oneof them, which I had carefully noted, shone at this season of the yeardirectly over the cone of the mountain, and we were enabled to steerthereby.
It must have been not more than half an hour before the dawn that Hans,who was leading--we were pushing our way through thick bushes at thetime--halted hurriedly, saying:
"Stop, Baas, we are on the edge of a cliff. When I thrust my stickforward it stands on nothing."
Needless to say we pulled up dead and so remained without stirringan inch, for who could say what might be beyond us? Ragnall wished toexamine the ground with the lantern. I was about to consent, thoughdoubtfully, when suddenly I heard voices murmuring and through thescreen of bushes saw lights moving at a little distance, forty feet ormore below us. Then we gave up all idea of making further use of thelantern and crouched still as mice in our bushes, waiting for the dawn.
It came at last. In the east appeared a faint pearly flush that bydegrees spread itself over the whole arch of the sky and was welcomedby the barking of monkeys and the call of birds in the depths of thedew-steeped forest. Next a ray from the unrisen sun, a single spearof light shot suddenly across the sky, and as it appeared, from thedarkness below us arose a sound of chanting, very low and sweet to hear.It died away and for a little while there was silence broken only bya rustling sound like to that of people taking their seats in a darktheatre. Then a woman began to sing in a beautiful, contralto voice,but in what language I do not know, for I could not catch the words, ifthese were words and not only musical notes.
I felt Ragnall trembling beside me and in a whisper asked him what wasthe matter. He answered, also in a whisper:
"I believe that is my wife's voice."
"If so, I beg you to control yourself," I replied.
Now the skies began to flame and the light to pour itself into a mistyhollow beneath us like streams of many-coloured gems into a bowl,driving away the shadows. By degrees these vanished; by degrees we saweverything. Beneath us was an amphitheatre, on the southern wall ofwhich we were seated, though it was not a wall but a lava cliff betweenforty and fifty feet high which served as a wall. The amphitheatreitself, however, almost exactly resembled those of the ancients whichI had seen in pictures and Ragnall had visited in Italy, Greece, andSouthern France. It was oval in shape and not very large, perhaps theflat space at the bottom may have covered something over an acre, butall round this oval ran tiers of seats cut in the lava of the crater.For without doubt this was the crater of an extinct volcano.
Moreover, in what I will call the arena, stood a temple that in its mainoutlines, although small, exactly resembled those still to be seen inEgypt. There was the gateway or pylon; there the open outer court withcolumns round it supporting roofed cloisters, which, as we ascertainedafterwards, were used as dwelling-places by the priests. There beyondand connected with the first by a short passage was a second rathersmaller court, also open to the sky, and beyond this again, built likeall the rest of the temple of lava blocks, a roofed erection measuringabout twelve feet square, which I guessed at once must be the sanctuary.
This temple was, as I have said, small, but extremely well proportioned,every detail of it being in the most excellent taste though unornamentedby sculpture or painting. I have to add that in front of the sanctuarydoor stood a large block of lava, which I concluded was an altar, and infront of this a stone seat and a basin, also of stone, supported upon avery low tripod. Further, behind the sanctuary was a square house withwindow-places.
At the moment of our first sight of this place the courts were empty,but on the benches of the amphitheatre were seated about three hundredpersons, male and female, the men to the north and the women to thesouth. They were all clad in pure white robes, the heads of the menbeing shaved and those of the women veiled, but leaving the faceexposed. Lastly, there were two roadways into the amphitheatre, onerunning east and one west through tunnels hollowed in the encirclingrock of the crater, both of which roads were closed at the mouths of thetunnels by massive wooden double doors, seventeen or eighteen feetin height. From these roadways and their doors we learned two things.First, that the cave where had lived the Father of Serpents was, as Ihad suspected, not the real approach to the shrine of the Child, butonly a blind; and, secondly, that the ceremony we were about to witnesswas secret and might only be attended by the priestly class or familiesof this strange tribe.
Scarcely was it full daylight when from the cells of the cloistersround the outer court issued twelve priests headed by Harut himself, wholooked very dignified in his white garment, each of whom carried on awooden platter ears of different kinds of corn. Then from the cells ofthe southern cloister issued twelve women, or rather girls, for all wereyoung and very comely, who ranged themselves alongside of the men. Thesealso carried wooden platters, and on them blooming flowers.
At a sign they struck up a religious chant and began to walk forwardthrough the passage that led from the first court to the second.Arriving in front of the altar they halted and one by one, first apriest and then a priestess, set down the platters of offerings, pilingthem above each other into a cone. Next the priests and the priestessesranged themselves in lines on either side of the altar, and Harut tooka platter of corn and a platter of flowers in his hands. These he heldfirst towards that quarter of the sky in which swam the invisible newmoon, secondly towards the rising sun, and thirdly towards the doors ofthe sanctuary, making genuflexions and uttering some chanted prayer, thewords of which we could not hear.
A pause followed, that was succeeded by a sudden outburst of songwherein all the audience took part. It was a very sonorous and beautifulsong or hymn in some language which I did not understand, divided intofour verses, the end of each verse being marked by the bowing of everyone of those many singers towards the east, towards the west, andfinally towards the altar.
Another pause till suddenly the doors of the sanctuary were thrown wideand from between them issued--the goddess Isis of the Egyptians as Ihave seen her in pictures! She was wrapped in closely clinging draperiesof material so thin that the whiteness of her body could be seenbeneath. Her hair was outspread before her, and she wore a head-dressor bonnet of glittering feathers from the front of which rose a littlegolden snake. In her arms she bore what at that distance seemed to bea naked child. With her came two women, walking a little behind herand supporting her arms, who also wore feather bonnets but without thegolden snake, and were clad in tight-fitting, transparent garments.
"My God!" whispered Ragnall, "it is my wife!"
"Then be silent and thank Him that she is alive and well," I answered.
The goddess Isis, or the English lady--in that excitement I did notreck which--stood still while the priests and priestesses and all theaudience, who, gathered on the upper benches of the amphitheatre, couldsee her above the wall of the inner court, raised a thrice-repeated andtriumphant cry of welcome. Then Harut and the first priestess liftedrespectively an ear of corn and a flower from the two topmost plattersand held these first to the lips of the child in her arms and secondlyto her lips.
This ceremony concluded, the two attendant women led her round the altarto the stone chair, upon which she seated herself. Next fire was kindledin the bowl on the tripod in front of the chair, how I could not see;but perhaps it was already smouldering there. At any rate it burnt upin a thin blue flame, on t
o which Harut and the head priestess threwsomething that caused the flame to turn to smoke. Then Isis, for Iprefer to call her so while describing this ceremony, was caused to bendher head forward, so that it was enveloped in the smoke exactly as sheand I had done some years before in the drawing-room at Ragnall Castle.Presently the smoke died away and the two attendants with the featheredhead-dresses straightened her in the chair where she sat still holdingthe babe against her breast as she might have done to nurse it, but withher head bent forward like that of a person in a swoon.
Now Harut stepped forward and appeared to speak to the goddess at somelength, then fell back again and waited, till in the midst of an intensesilence she rose from her seat and, fixing her wide eyes on the heavens,spoke in her turn, for although we heard nothing of what she said, inthat clear, morning light we could see her lips moving. For some minutesshe spoke, then sat down again upon the chair and remained motionless,staring straight in front of her. Harut advanced again, this time tothe front of the altar, and, taking his stand upon a kind of stone step,addressed the priests and priestesses and all the encircling audience ina voice so loud and clear that I could distinguish and understand everyword he said.
"The Guardian of the heavenly Child, the Nurse decreed, the appointedNurturer, She who is the shadow of her that bore the Child, She who inher day bears the symbol of the Child and is consecrated to its servicefrom of old, She whose heart is filled with the wisdom of the Child andwho utters the decrees of Heaven, has spoken. Hearken now to the voiceof the Oracle uttered in answer to the questions of me, Harut, the headpriest of the Eternal Child during my life-days. Thus says the Oracle,the Guardian, the Nurturer, marked like all who went before her withthe holy mark of the new moon. She on whom the spirit, flitting fromgeneration to generation, has alighted for a while. 'O people of theWhite Kendah, worshippers of the Child in this land and descendants ofthose who for thousands of years worshipped the Child in a moreancient land until the barbarians drove it thence with the remnant thatremained. War is upon you, O people of the White Kendah. Jana the evilone; he whose other name is Set, he whose other name is Satan, he whofor this while lives in the shape of an elephant, he who is worshippedby the thousands whom once you conquered, and whom still you bridle bymy might, comes up against you. The Darkness wars against the Daylight,the Evil wars against the Good. My curse has fallen upon the people ofJana, my hail has smitten them, their corn and their cattle; they haveno food to eat. But they are still strong for war and there is food inyour land. They come to take your corn; Jana comes to trample your god.The Evil comes to destroy the Good, the Night to Devour the Day. It isthe last of many battles. How shall you conquer, O People of the Child?Not by your own strength, for you are few in number and Jana is verystrong. Not by the strength of the Child, for the Child grows weak andold, the days of its dominion are almost done, and its worship is almostoutworn. Here alone that worship lingers, but new gods, who are stillthe old gods, press on to take its place and to lead it to its rest.'
"How then shall you conquer that, when the Child has departed to its ownplace, a remnant of you may still remain? In one way only--so saysthe Guardian, the Nurturer of the Child speaking with the voice of theChild; by the help of those whom you have summoned to your aid from far.There were four of them, but one you have suffered to be slain inthe maw of the Watcher in the cave. It was an evil deed, O sons anddaughters of the Child, for as the Watcher is now dead, so ere longmany of you who planned this deed must die who, had it not been for thatman's blood, would have lived on a while. Why did you do this thing?That you might keep a secret, the secret of the theft of a woman, thatyou might continue to act a lie which falls upon your head like a stonefrom heaven.
"Thus saith the Child: 'Lift no hand against the three who remain, andwhat they shall ask, that give, for thus alone shall some of you besaved from Jana and those who serve him, even though the Guardian andthe Child be taken away and the Child itself returned to its ownplace.' These are the words of the Oracle uttered at the Feast of theFirst-fruits, the words that cannot be changed and mayhap its last."
Harut ceased, and there was silence while this portentous message sankinto the minds of his audience. At length they seemed to understand itsominous nature and from them all there arose a universal, simultaneousgroan. As it died away the two attendants dressed as goddesses assistedthe personification of the Lady Isis to rise from her seat and, openingthe robes upon her breast, pointed to something beneath her throat,doubtless that birthmark shaped like the new moon which made her sosacred in their eyes since she who bore it and she alone could fill herholy office.
All the audience and with them the priests and priestesses bowed beforeher. She lifted the symbol of the Child, holding it high above her head,whereon once more they bowed with the deepest veneration. Then stillholding the effigy aloft, she turned and with her two attendants passedinto the sanctuary and doubtless thence by a covered way into the housebeyond. At any rate we saw her no more.