At first we were much puzzled as to the origin and laws of this most extraordinary race, points upon which they were singularly uncommunicative. As time went on, however—for the next four days passed without any striking event—we learnt something from Leo’s lady friend, Ustane, who, by the way, clung 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, called Kôr, near to the place where She lived, which the wise said had once been houses wherein men dwelt, and it was suggested that the Amahagger were descended from these men. No one, however, dared to 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 abode 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, but she only smiled in answer, and said that I might see one day soon.
They had a Queen, however. She was their Queen, but she appeared very rarely, perhaps once in two or three years, when she came forth to pass sentence on some offenders, and when seen she 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, knew nothing about this. What she believed was that the Queen chose a husband from time to time, and so soon as a female child was born, this husband, who was never seen again, 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 could only be threaded by secret paths. Often the “Households” made war on each other until She sent word that it was to stop, when they instantly obeyed her. Wars 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; also the swamps could not be crossed by foes. Once an army from the direction of the great river (presumably the Zambesi) had attempted to attack them, but lost themselves 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’s 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 repeated, 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 now were had we not been brought thither.
These and many other things we learned 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 story 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 understand it, nor could Leo, though of course he was triumphant exceedingly over me because I had persistently mocked at the legend. 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, by the way, was 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 it was that frightened him. He would sit crouched in a corner of the cave all day long, calling upon Allah and the Prophet for protection. When I pressed him about it, he said that he was afraid because these people were not men and 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, till the night of the fourth day after Billali had left, when something happened.
We three and Ustane were sitting round a fire in the cave just before bedtime, when suddenly the woman, who had been brooding in silence, rose, and laid her hand upon Leo’s golden curls, and addressed him. Even now, when I shut my eyes, I can see her proud, shapely form, clothed alternately in dense shadow and the red flickering light of the fire, as she stood, the wild centre of as wild a scene as I ever witnessed, and delivered herself of the burden of her thoughts and forebodings in a rhythmical speech that ran something as follows:—
Thou art my chosen—I have waited for thee from the beginning!
Thou art very beautiful. Who hath hair like unto thee, or skin so white?
Who hath so strong an arm, who is so much a man?
Thine eyes are the sky, and the light in them is the stars.
Thou art perfect and of a happy face, and my heart turned itself towards thee.
Ay, when mine eyes fell upon thee I did desire thee,—
Then did I take thee to me—O thou Beloved,
And hold thee fast, lest harm should come unto thee.
Ay, I did cover thine head with mine hair, lest the sun should strike it;
And altogether was I thine, and thou wast altogether mine.
And so it went for a little space, till Time was in labour with an evil Day;
And then, what befell on that day? Alas! my Beloved, I know not!
But I, I saw thee no more—I, I was lost in the blackness.
And she who is stronger did take thee; ay, she who is fairer than Ustane.
7.1 “Thou art my chosen.”
Yet didst thou turn and call upon me, and let thine eyes search in the darkness.
But, nevertheless, she prevailed by Beauty, and led thee down horrible places,
And then, ah! then my Beloved——
Here this extraordinary woman broke off her speech, or chant, which was so much musical gibberish to us who could not understand of what she was talking, and seemed to fix her flashing eyes upon the deep shadow before her. Then in a moment they acquired a vacant, terrified stare, as though they were striving to picture some half-seen horror. She lifted her hand from Leo’s head, and pointed into the darkness. We all looked, and could see nothing; but she saw something, or thought she did, and something evidently that affected even her iron nerves, for, without another sound, down she fell senseless between us.
Leo, who had grown really attached to this remarkable young person, became greatly alarmed and distressed, and, to be perfectly candid, my own condition was not far removed from that of superstitious fear. The scene and circumstances were so very uncanny.
Presently, however, she recovered, and sat up with a convulsive shudder.
“What didst thou mean, Ustane?” asked Leo, who, thanks to years of tuition, spoke Arabic very prettily.
“Nay, my chosen,” she answered, with a little forced laugh, “I did but sing unto thee after the fashion of my people. Surely, I meant nothing. How could I speak of that which is not yet?”
“And what didst thou see, Ustane?” I asked, looking her sharply in the face.
“Nay,” she answered again, “I saw naught. Ask me not what I saw. Why should I affright you??
?? Then, turning to Leo with a look of the most utter tenderness that I ever saw upon the face of a woman, civilised or savage, she took his head between her hands, and kissed him on the forehead as a mother might.
“When I am gone from thee, my chosen,” she said; “when at night thou stretchest out thine hand and canst not find me, then shouldst thou think at times of me, for of a truth I love thee well, though I be not fit to wash thy feet. And now let us love and take that which is given us, and be happy; for in the grave there is no love and no warmth, nor any touching of the lips. Nothing perchance, or perchance but bitter memories of what might have been. To-night the hours are our own; how know we to whom they shall belong to-morrow?”
*We found tobacco growing in this country as it does in every other part of Africa, and, although they are so absolutely ignorant of its other blessed qualities, the Amahagger use it habitually in the form of snuff, and also for medicinal purposes.—L. H. H.
VIII
THE FEAST, AND AFTER!
On the day following this remarkable scene—a scene calculated to make a deep impression upon anybody who beheld it, more because of what it suggested and seemed to foreshadow than of what it revealed—it was announced to us that a feast would be held that evening in our honour. I did my best to decline it, saying that we were modest people, who cared little for feasts, but as my remarks were received with the silence of displeasure, I thought it wisest to make no further objections.
Accordingly, just before sundown, I was informed that everything was ready, and, accompanied by Job, went into the cave, where I met Leo, who as usual was followed by Ustane. These two had been out walking somewhere, and knew nothing of the projected festivity till that moment. When Ustane heard of it I saw an expression of horror start upon her handsome features. Turning, she caught a man who was passing up the cave by the arm, and asked him something in an imperious tone. His answer seemed to reassure her a little, for she looked relieved, though far from satisfied. Next she appeared to attempt some remonstrance with the man, who was a person in authority, but he spoke angrily to her, and shook her off. Then, changing his mind, he took her by the arm, and sat her down between himself and another man in the circle round the fire, and I perceived that for some reason of her own she thought it best to submit.
The fire in the cave was unusually large that night, and in a wide circle round it were gathered about thirty-five men and two women—Ustane and the woman to avoid whom Job had played the rôle of another Scriptural character. The men were sitting in perfect silence, as was their custom, each with his great spear set upright behind him, in a socket cut in the rock for that purpose. Only one or two wore the yellowish linen garment of which I have spoken, the rest had nothing on except the leopard skin about the middle.
“What’s up now, sir?” said Job, doubtfully. “Bless us and save us, there’s that woman again. Now, surely, she can’t be after me, seeing that I have given her no encouragement. They give me the creeps, the whole lot of them, and that’s a fact. Why, look, they have asked Mahomed to dine, too. There, that lady of mine is talking to him in as nice and civil a way as possible. Well, I’m glad it isn’t me, that’s all!”
We looked, and surely enough the woman in question had risen, and was escorting the wretched Mahomed from his corner, where, overcome by some acute prescience of horror, he had been seated, shivering, and calling on Allah. He appeared unwilling enough to comply, if for no other reason perhaps because it was an unaccustomed honour, for hitherto his food had been given to him apart. Anyway, I could see that he was in a state of great terror, for his tottering legs would scarcely support his stout, bulky form, and I think it was rather owing to the resources of barbarism behind him, in the shape of a huge Amahagger with a proportionately huge spear, than to the seductions of the lady who led him by the hand, that he consented to come at all.
“Well,” I said to the others, “I don’t at all like the look of things, but I suppose we must face it out. Have you fellows got your revolvers on? because, if so, you had better see that they are loaded.”
“I have, sir,” said Job, tapping his Colt, “but Mr. Leo has only got his hunting-knife, though that is big enough, surely.”
Feeling that it would not do to wait while the missing weapon was fetched, we advanced boldly, and seated ourselves in a line, with our backs against the side of the cave.
So soon as we were seated an earthenware jar was passed round containing a fermented fluid of by no means unpleasant taste, though apt to turn upon the stomach, made from crushed grain—not Indian corn, but a small brown grain that grows upon its stem in clusters, not unlike that which in the southern part of Africa is known by the name of Kafir corn. The vase which contained this liquor was very curious, and as it more or less resembled many hundreds of others in use among the Amahagger I may as well describe it. These vases are of a very ancient manufacture, and of all sizes. None such can have been made in the country for hundreds, or rather thousands, of years. They are found in the rock tombs, of which I shall give a description in their proper place, and my own belief is that they were used to receive the viscera of the dead, after the fashion of the Egyptians, with whom the former inhabitants of this country may have had some connection. Leo, however, is of opinion that, as in the case of Etruscan amphoræ, they were placed there for the spiritual use of the deceased. They are mostly two-handled, and of all sizes, some measuring nearly three feet, and running from that height down to as many inches. In shape they vary, but are all exceedingly beautiful and graceful, being made of a very fine black ware, not lustrous, but slightly rough. On this groundwork are inlaid figures much more graceful and lifelike than any others that I have seen on antique vases. Some of these inlaid pictures represent love-scenes with a child-like simplicity and freedom of manner which would not commend itself to the taste of the present day. Others again give pictures of maidens dancing, and yet others of hunting-scenes. For instance, the very vase from which we were then drinking had on one side a most spirited drawing of men, apparently white in colour, attacking a bull-elephant with spears, while on the reverse was a picture, not quite so well done, of a hunter shooting an arrow at a running antelope, I should say from the look of it either an eland or a koodoo.
This is a digression at a critical moment, but it is not too long for the occasion, for the occasion itself was very long. With the exception of the periodical passing of the vase, and the movement necessary to throw fuel on to the fire, nothing happened for the best part of a whole hour. Nobody spoke a word. There we all sat in perfect silence, staring at the glare and glow of the large fire, and at the shadows thrown by the flickering earthenware lamps—which, by the way, were not ancient. On the open space between us and the fire lay a large wooden tray, with four short handles to it, exactly like a butcher’s tray, only not hollowed out. By the side of the tray was a great pair of long-handled iron pincers, and on the other side of the fire was a similar pair. Somehow I did not at all like the appearance of this tray and of the accompanying pincers. There I sat contemplating them and the silent circle of the fierce moody faces of the men, reflecting that it was all very awful, and that we were absolutely in the power of this fearsome people, who, to me at any rate, were all the more formidable because their true character was still very much of a mystery to us. They might be better than I thought them, or they might be worse. I feared that they were worse, and I was not wrong. It was a curious sort of a feast, I reflected, in appearance indeed an entertainment of the Barmecide stamp, for there was absolutely nothing to eat.
At last, just as I had begun to feel as though I were being mesmerised, a move was made. Without the slightest warning, a man from the other side of the circle called out in a loud voice—
“Where is the flesh that we shall eat?”
Thereon everybody in the circle answered in a deep measured tone, and stretching out the right arm towards the fire as he spoke—“The flesh will come.” “Is it a goat?” said the same man.
“It is a goat without horns, and more than a goat, and we shall slay it,” they answered with one voice, and turning half round one and all they grasped the handles of their spears with the right hand, and then simultaneously released them.
“Is it an ox?” said the man again.
“It is an ox without horns, and more than an ox, and we shall slay it,” was the answer, and again the spears were grasped, and again released.
8.1 And turning half round one and all they grasped the handles of their spears.
Then came a pause, and I noticed, with horror and a rising of the hair, that the woman next to Mahomed began to fondle him, patting his cheeks, and calling him by names of endearment while her fierce eyes played up and down his trembling form. I do not know why the sight frightened me, but it did frighten us all dreadfully, especially Leo. The caressing was so snake-like, and so evidently a part of some ghastly formula that had to be gone through.* I saw Mahomed turn white under his brown skin, sickly white with fear.
“Is the meat ready to be cooked?” asked the voice, more rapidly.