IX
A LITTLE FOOT
When I opened my eyes again I found myself lying on a skin mat not farfrom the fire round which we had been gathered for that dreadful feast.Near me lay Leo, still apparently in a swoon, and over him was bendingthe tall form of the girl Ustane, who was washing a deep spear woundin his side with cold water preparatory to binding it up with linen.Leaning against the wall of the cave behind her was Job, apparentlyuninjured, but bruised and trembling. On the other side of the fire,tossed about this way and that, as though they had thrown themselvesdown to sleep in some moment of absolute exhaustion, were the bodies ofthose whom we had killed in our frightful struggle for life. I countedthem: there were twelve besides the woman, and the corpse of poorMahomed, who had died by my hand, which, the fire-stained pot at itsside, was placed at the end of the irregular line. To the left a body ofmen were engaged in binding the arms of the survivors of the cannibalsbehind them, and then fastening them two and two. The villains weresubmitting with a look of sulky indifference upon their faces whichaccorded ill with the baffled fury that gleamed in their sombre eyes.In front of these men, directing the operations, stood no other than ourfriend Billali, looking rather tired, but particularly patriarchalwith his flowing beard, and as cool and unconcerned as though he weresuperintending the cutting up of an ox.
Presently he turned, and perceiving that I was sitting up advancedto me, and with the utmost courtesy said that he trusted that I feltbetter. I answered that at present I scarcely knew how I felt, exceptthat I ached all over.
Then he bent down and examined Leo's wound.
"It is an evil cut," he said, "but the spear has not pierced theentrails. He will recover."
"Thanks to thy arrival, my father," I answered. "In another minute weshould all have been beyond the reach of recovery, for those devils ofthine would have slain us as they would have slain our servant," and Ipointed towards Mahomed.
The old man ground his teeth, and I saw an extraordinary expression ofmalignity light up his eyes.
"Fear not, my son," he answered. "Vengeance shall be taken on them suchas would make the flesh twist upon the bones merely to hear of it. To_She_ shall they go, and her vengeance shall be worthy of her greatness.That man," pointing to Mahomed, "I tell thee that man would have died amerciful death to the death these hyæna-men shall die. Tell me, I prayof thee, how it came about."
In a few words I sketched what had happened.
"Ah, so," he answered. "Thou seest, my son, here there is a custom thatif a stranger comes into this country he may be slain by 'the pot,' andeaten."
"It is hospitality turned upside down," I answered feebly. "In ourcountry we entertain a stranger, and give him food to eat. Here ye eathim, and are entertained."
"It is a custom," he answered, with a shrug. "Myself I think it an evilone; but then," he added by an afterthought, "I do not like the tasteof strangers, especially after they have wandered through the swamps andlived on wild-fowl. When _She-who-must-be-obeyed_ sent orders that yewere to be saved alive she said naught of the black man, therefore,being hyænas, these men lusted after his flesh, and the woman it was,whom thou didst rightly slay, who put it into their evil hearts tohot-pot him. Well, they will have their reward. Better for them would itbe if they had never seen the light than that they should stand before_She_ in her terrible anger. Happy are those of them who died by yourhands."
"Ah," he went on, "it was a gallant fight that ye fought. Knowest thouthat, long-armed old baboon that thou art, thou hast crushed in the ribsof those two who are laid out there as though they were but as the shellon an egg? And the young one, the lion, it was a beautiful stand thathe made--one against so many--three did he slay outright, and that onethere"--and he pointed to a body that was still moving a little--"willdie anon, for his head is cracked across, and others of those who arebound are hurt. It was a gallant fight, and thou and he have made afriend of me by it, for I love to see a well-fought fray. But tell me,my son, the baboon--and now I think of it thy face, too, is hairy, andaltogether like a baboon's--how was it that ye slew those with a hole inthem?--Ye made a noise, they say, and slew them--they fell down on thefaces at the noise?"
I explained to him as well as I could, but very shortly--for I wasterribly wearied, and only persuaded to talk at all through fearof offending one so powerful if I refused to do so--what were theproperties of gunpowder, and he instantly suggested that I shouldillustrate what I said by operating on the person of one of theprisoners. One, he said, never would be counted, and it would not onlybe very interesting to him, but would give me the opportunity of aninstalment of revenge. He was greatly astounded when I told him that itwas not our custom to avenge ourselves in cold blood, and that we leftvengeance to the law and a higher power, of which he knew nothing. Iadded, however, that when I recovered I would take him out shootingwith us, and he should kill an animal for himself, and at this he was aspleased as a child at the promise of a new toy.
Just then Leo opened his eyes beneath the stimulus of some brandy (ofwhich we still had a little) that Job had poured down his throat, andour conversation came to an end.
After this we managed to get Leo, who was in a very poor way indeed, andonly half conscious, safely off to bed, supported by Job and that bravegirl Ustane, to whom, had I not been afraid that she might resent it, Iwould certainly have given a kiss for her splendid behaviour in savingmy boy's life at the risk of her own. But Ustane was not the sort ofyoung person with whom one would care to take liberties unless one wereperfectly certain that they would not be misunderstood, so I repressedmy inclinations. Then, bruised and battered, but with a sense of safetyin my breast to which I had for some days been a stranger, I crept offto my own little sepulchre, not forgetting before I laid down in it tothank Providence from the bottom of my heart that it was not a sepulchreindeed, as, save for a merciful combination of events that I can onlyattribute to its protection, it would certainly have been for me thatnight. Few men have been nearer their end and yet escaped it than wewere on that dreadful day.
I am a bad sleeper at the best of times, and my dreams that night whenat last I got to rest were not of the pleasantest. The awful vision ofpoor Mahomed struggling to escape the red-hot pot would haunt them, andthen in the background, as it were, a veiled form was always hovering,which, from time to time, seemed to draw the coverings from its body,revealing now the perfect shape of a lovely blooming woman, and nowagain the white bones of a grinning skeleton, and which, as it veiledand unveiled, uttered the mysterious and apparently meaninglesssentence:--
"That which is alive and hath known death, and that which is dead yetcan never die, for in the Circle of the Spirit life is naught and deathis naught. Yea, all things live for ever, though at times they sleep andare forgotten."
The morning came at last, but when it came I found that I was too stiffand sore to rise. About seven Job arrived, limping terribly, and withhis face the colour of a rotten apple, and told me that Leo had sleptfairly, but was very weak. Two hours afterwards Billali (Job calledhim "Billy-goat," to which, indeed, his white beard gave him someresemblance, or more familiarly, "Billy") came too, bearing a lamp inhis hand, his towering form reaching nearly to the roof of the littlechamber. I pretended to be asleep, and through the cracks of my eyelidswatched his sardonic but handsome old face. He fixed his hawk-like eyesupon me, and stroked his glorious white beard, which, by the way,would have been worthy a hundred a year to any London barber as anadvertisement.
"Ah!" I heard him mutter (Billali had a habit of muttering to himself),"he is ugly--ugly as the other is beautiful--a very Baboon, it was agood name. But I like the man. Strange now, at my age, that I shouldlike a man. What says the proverb--'Mistrust all men, and slay him whomthou mistrustest overmuch; and as for women, flee from them, for theyare evil, and in the end will destroy thee.' It is a good proverb,especially the last part of it: I think that it must have come down fromthe ancients. Nevertheless I like this Baboon, and I wonder where theytaught him his tric
ks, and I trust that _She_ will not bewitch him. PoorBaboon! he must be wearied after that fight. I will go lest I shouldawake him."
I waited till he had turned and was nearly through the entrance, walkingsoftly on tiptoe, and then I called after him.
"My father," I said, "is it thou?"
"Yes, my son, it is I; but let me not disturb thee. I did but come tosee how thou didst fare, and to tell thee that those who would haveslain thee, my Baboon, are by now far on their road to _She_. _She_ saidthat ye also were to come at once, but I fear ye cannot yet."
"Nay," I said, "not till we have recovered a little; but have me borneout into the daylight, I pray thee, my father. I love not this place."
"Ah, no," he answered, "it hath a sad air. I remember when I was a boy Ifound the body of a fair woman lying where thou liest now, yes, on thatvery bench. She was so beautiful that I was wont to creep in hither witha lamp and gaze upon her. Had it not been for her cold hands, almostcould I think that she slept and would one day awake, so fair andpeaceful was she in her robes of white. White was she, too, and herhair was yellow and lay down her almost to the feet. There are many suchstill in the tombs at the place where _She_ is, for those who set themthere had a way I know naught of, whereby to keep their beloved out ofthe crumbling hand of Decay, even when Death had slain them. Ay, dayby day I came hither, and gazed on her till at last--laugh not at me,stranger, for I was but a silly lad--I learned to love that dead form,that shell which once had held a life that no more is. I would creepup to her and kiss her cold face, and wonder how many men had lived anddied since she was, and who had loved her and embraced her in the daysthat long had passed away. And, my Baboon, I think I learned wisdom fromthat dead one, for of a truth it taught me of the littleness of life,and the length of Death, and how all things that are under the sun godown one path, and are for ever forgotten. And so I mused, and it seemedto me that wisdom flowed into me from the dead, till one day my mother,a watchful woman, but hasty-minded, seeing I was changed, followed me,and saw the beautiful white one, and feared that I was bewitched, as,indeed, I was. So half in dread, and half in anger, she took up thelamp, and standing the dead woman up against the wall even there, setfire to her hair, and she burnt fiercely, even down to the feet, forthose who are thus kept burn excellently well.
"See, my son, there on the roof is yet the smoke of her burning."
I looked up doubtfully, and there, sure enough, on the roof of thesepulchre, was a peculiarly unctuous and sooty mark, three feet or moreacross. Doubtless it had in the course of years been rubbed off thesides of the little cave, but on the roof it remained, and there was nomistaking its appearance.
"She burnt," he went on in a meditative way, "even to the feet, but thefeet I came back and saved, cutting the burnt bone from them, andhid them under the stone bench there, wrapped up in a piece of linen.Surely, I remember it as though it were but yesterday. Perchance theyare there, if none have found them, even to this hour. Of a truth I havenot entered this chamber from that time to this very day. Stay, I willlook," and, kneeling down, he groped about with his long arm in therecess under the stone bench. Presently his face brightened, and with anexclamation he pulled something forth which was caked in dust; which heshook on to the floor. It was covered with the remains of a rotting rag,which he undid, and revealed to my astonished gaze a beautifully shapedand almost white woman's foot, looking as fresh and firm as though ithad but now been placed there.
"Thou seest, my son, the Baboon," he said, in a sad voice, "I spake thetruth to thee, for here is yet one foot remaining. Take it, my son, andgaze upon it."
I took this cold fragment of mortality in my hand and looked at it inthe light of the lamp with feelings which I cannot describe, so mixedup were they between astonishment, fear, and fascination. It was light,much lighter I should say than it had been in the living state, and theflesh to all appearance was still flesh, though about it there clung afaintly aromatic odour. For the rest it was not shrunk or shrivelled, oreven black and unsightly, like the flesh of Egyptian mummies, but plumpand fair, and, except where it had been slightly burnt, perfect as onthe day of death--a very triumph of embalming.
Poor little foot! I set it down upon the stone bench where it had lainfor so many thousand years, and wondered whose was the beauty thatit had upborne through the pomp and pageantry of a forgottencivilisation--first as a merry child's, then as a blushing maid's, andlastly as a perfect woman's. Through what halls of Life had its softstep echoed, and in the end, with what courage had it trodden down thedusty ways of Death! To whose side had it stolen in the hush of nightwhen the black slave slept upon the marble floor, and who had listenedfor its stealing? Shapely little foot! Well might it have been set uponthe proud neck of a conqueror bent at last to woman's beauty, andwell might the lips of nobles and of kings have been pressed upon itsjewelled whiteness.
I wrapped up this relic of the past in the remnants of the old linen ragwhich had evidently formed a portion of its owner's grave-clothes, forit was partially burnt, and put it away in my Gladstone bag--a strangecombination, I thought. Then with Billali's help I staggered off to seeLeo. I found him dreadfully bruised, worse even than myself, perhapsowing to the excessive whiteness of his skin, and faint and weak withthe loss of blood from the flesh wound in his side, but for all thatcheerful as a cricket, and asking for some breakfast. Job and Ustanegot him on to the bottom, or rather the sacking of a litter, which wasremoved from its pole for that purpose, and with the aid of old Billalicarried him out into the shade at the mouth of the cave, from which, bythe way, every trace of the slaughter of the previous night had now beenremoved, and there we all breakfasted, and indeed spent that day, andmost of the two following ones.
On the third morning Job and myself were practically recovered. Leo alsowas so much better that I yielded to Billali's often expressed entreaty,and agreed to start at once upon our journey to Kôr, which we were toldwas the name of the place where the mysterious _She_ lived, though Istill feared for its effect upon Leo, and especially lest the motionshould cause his wound, which was scarcely skinned over, to break openagain. Indeed, had it not been for Billali's evident anxiety to get off,which led us to suspect that some difficulty or danger might threaten usif we did not comply with it, I would not have consented to go.