VII
USTANE SINGS
When the kissing operation was finished--by the way, none of the youngladies offered to pet me in this fashion, though I saw one hoveringround Job, to that respectable individual's evident alarm--the old manBillali advanced, and graciously waved us into the cave, whither wewent, followed by Ustane, who did not seem inclined to take the hints Igave her that we liked privacy.
Before we had gone five paces it struck me that the cave that we wereentering was none of Nature's handiwork, but, on the contrary, had beenhollowed by the hand of man. So far as we could judge it appeared tobe about one hundred feet in length by fifty wide, and very lofty,resembling a cathedral aisle more than anything else. From this mainaisle opened passages at a distance of every twelve or fifteen feet,leading, I supposed, to smaller chambers. About fifty feet from theentrance of the cave, just where the light began to get dim, a fire wasburning, which threw huge shadows upon the gloomy walls around. HereBillali halted, and asked us to be seated, saying that the people wouldbring us food, and accordingly we squatted ourselves down upon therugs of skins which were spread for us, and waited. Presently the food,consisting of goat's flesh boiled, fresh milk in an earthenware pot, andboiled cobs of Indian corn, was brought by young girls. We were almoststarving, and I do not think that I ever in my life before ate withsuch satisfaction. Indeed, before we had finished we literally ate upeverything that was set before us.
When we had done, our somewhat saturnine host, Billali, who had beenwatching us in perfect silence, rose and addressed us. He said that itwas a wonderful thing that had happened. No man had ever known or heardof white strangers arriving in the country of the People of the Rocks.Sometimes, though rarely, black men had come here, and from them theyhad heard of the existence of men much whiter than themselves, whosailed on the sea in ships, but for the arrival of such there was noprecedent. We had, however, been seen dragging the boat up the canal,and he told us frankly that he had at once given orders for ourdestruction, seeing that it was unlawful for any stranger to enter here,when a message had come from "_She-who-must-be-obeyed_," saying that ourlives were to be spared, and that we were to be brought hither.
"Pardon me, my father," I interrupted at this point; "but if, as Iunderstand, '_She-who-must-be-obeyed_' lives yet farther off, how couldshe have known of our approach?"
Billali turned, and seeing that we were alone--for the young lady,Ustane, had withdrawn when he had begun to speak--said, with a curiouslittle laugh--
"Are there none in your land who can see without eyes and hear withoutears? Ask no questions; _She_ knew."
I shrugged my shoulders at this, and he proceeded to say that no furtherinstructions had been received on the subject of our disposal, and thisbeing so he was about to start to interview "_She-who-must-be-obeyed_,"generally spoken of, for the sake of brevity, as "Hiya" or _She_ simply,who he gave us to understand was the Queen of the Amahagger, and learnher wishes.
I asked him how long he proposed to be away, and he said that bytravelling hard he might be back on the fifth day, but there were manymiles of marsh to cross before he came to where _She_ was. He then saidthat every arrangement would be made for our comfort during his absence,and that, as he personally had taken a fancy to us, he sincerely trustedthat the answer he should bring from _She_ would be one favourable tothe continuation of our existence, but at the same time he did not wishto conceal from us that he thought this doubtful, as every strangerwho had ever come into the country during his grandmother's life, hismother's life, and his own life, had been put to death without mercy,and in a way he would not harrow our feelings by describing; and thishad been done by the order of _She_ herself, at least he supposed thatit was by her order. At any rate, she never interfered to save them.
"Why," I said, "but how can that be? You are an old man, and the timeyou talk of must reach back three men's lives. How therefore could _She_have ordered the death of anybody at the beginning of the life of yourgrandmother, seeing that herself she would not have been born?"
Again he smiled--that same faint, peculiar smile, and with a deep bowdeparted, without making any answer; nor did we see him again for fivedays.
When he had gone we discussed the situation, which filled me withalarm. I did not at all like the accounts of this mysterious Queen,"_She-who-must-be-obeyed_," or more shortly _She_, who apparentlyordered the execution of any unfortunate stranger in a fashion sounmerciful. Leo, too, was depressed about it, but consoled himself bytriumphantly pointing out that this _She_ was undoubtedly the personreferred to in the writing on the potsherd and in his father's letter,in proof of which he advanced Billali's allusions to her age and power.I was by this time too overwhelmed with the whole course of events thatI had not even the heart left to dispute a proposition so absurd, so Isuggested that we should try to go out and get a bath, of which we allstood sadly in need.
Accordingly, having indicated our wish to a middle-aged individual ofan unusually saturnine cast of countenance, even among this saturninepeople, who appeared to be deputed to look after us now that the Fatherof the hamlet had departed, we started in a body--having first litour pipes. Outside the cave we found quite a crowd of people evidentlywatching for our appearance, but when they saw us come out smoking theyvanished this way and that, calling out that we were great magicians.Indeed, nothing about us created so great a sensation as our tobaccosmoke--not even our firearms.[*] After this we succeeded in reachinga stream that had its source in a strong ground spring, and taking ourbath in peace, though some of the women, not excepting Ustane, showed adecided inclination to follow us even there.
[*] We found tobacco growing in this country as it does in every other part of Africa, and, although they were 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.
By the time that we had finished this most refreshing bath the sun wassetting; indeed, when we got back to the big cave it had already set.The cave itself was full of people gathered round fires--for severalmore had now been lighted--and eating their evening meal by their luridlight, and by that of various lamps which were set about or hung uponthe walls. These lamps were of a rude manufacture of baked earthenware,and of all shapes, some of them graceful enough. The larger ones wereformed of big red earthenware pots, filled with clarified melted fat,and having a reed wick stuck through a wooden disk which filled the topof the pot. This sort of lamp required the most constant attention toprevent its going out whenever the wick burnt down, as there were nomeans of turning it up. The smaller hand lamps, however, which were alsomade of baked clay, were fitted with wicks manufactured from the pithof a palm-tree, or sometimes from the stem of a very handsome varietyof fern. This kind of wick was passed through a round hole at the end ofthe lamp, to which a sharp piece of hard wood was attached wherewith topierce and draw it up whenever it showed signs of burning low.
For a while we sat down and watched this grim people eating theirevening meal in silence as grim as themselves, till at length, gettingtired of contemplating them and the huge moving shadows on the rockywalls, I suggested to our new keeper that we should like to go to bed.
Without a word he rose, and, taking me politely by the hand, advancedwith a lamp to one of the small passages that I had noticed openingout of the central cave. This we followed for about five paces, when itsuddenly widened out into a small chamber, about eight feet square, andhewn out of the living rock. On one side of this chamber was a stoneslab, about three feet from the ground, and running its entire lengthlike a bunk in a cabin, and on this slab he intimated that I was tosleep. There was no window or air-hole to the chamber, and no furniture;and, on looking at it more closely, I came to the disturbing conclusion(in which, as I afterwards discovered, I was quite right) that ithad originally served for a sepulchre for the dead rather than asleeping-place for the living, the slab being designed to receive thecorpse of the departed. The thought made me shu
dder in spite of myself;but, seeing that I must sleep somewhere, I got over the feeling as bestI might, and returned to the cavern to get my blanket, which had beenbrought up from the boat with the other things. There I met Job, who,having been inducted to a similar apartment, had flatly declined to stopin it, saying that the look of the place gave him the horrors, and thathe might as well be dead and buried in his grandfather's brick graveat once, and expressed his determination of sleeping with me if I wouldallow him. This, of course, I was only too glad to do.
The night passed very comfortably on the whole. I say on the whole,for personally I went through a most horrible nightmare of being buriedalive, induced, no doubt, by the sepulchral nature of my surroundings.At dawn we were aroused by a loud trumpeting sound, produced, as weafterwards discovered, by a young Amahagger blowing through a holebored in its side into a hollowed elephant tusk, which was kept for thepurpose.
Taking the hint, we got up and went down to the stream to wash, afterwhich the morning meal was served. At breakfast one of the women, nolonger quite young, advanced and publicly kissed Job. I think it was inits way the most delightful thing (putting its impropriety aside fora moment) that I ever saw. Never shall I forget the respectable Job'sabject terror and disgust. Job, like myself, is a bit of a misogynist--Ifancy chiefly owing to the fact of his having been one of a familyof seventeen--and the feelings expressed upon his countenance whenhe realised that he was not only being embraced publicly, and withoutauthorisation on his own part, but also in the presence of his masters,were too mixed and painful to admit of accurate description. He sprangto his feet, and pushed the woman, a buxom person of about thirty, fromhim.
"Well, I never!" he gasped, whereupon probably thinking that he was onlycoy, she embraced him again.
"Be off with you! Get away, you minx!" he shouted, waving the woodenspoon, with which he was eating his breakfast, up and down before thelady's face. "Beg your pardon, gentlemen, I am sure I haven't encouragedher. Oh, Lord! she's coming for me again. Hold her, Mr. Holly! pleasehold her! I can't stand it; I can't, indeed. This has never happened tome before, gentlemen, never. There's nothing against my character," andhere he broke off, and ran as hard as he could go down the cave, and foronce I saw the Amahagger laugh. As for the woman, however, she didnot laugh. On the contrary, she seemed to bristle with fury, which themockery of the other women about only served to intensify. She stoodthere literally snarling and shaking with indignation, and, seeing her,I wished Job's scruples had been at Jericho, forming a shrewd guess thathis admirable behaviour had endangered our throats. Nor, as the sequelshows, was I wrong.
The lady having retreated, Job returned in a great state of nervousness,and keeping his weather eye fixed upon every woman who came near him. Itook an opportunity to explain to our hosts that Job was a married man,and had had very unhappy experiences in his domestic relations, whichaccounted for his presence here and his terror at the sight of women,but my remarks were received in grim silence, it being evident that ourretainer's behaviour was considered as a slight to the "household"at large, although the women, after the manner of some of their mostcivilised sisters, made merry at the rebuff of their companion.
After breakfast we took a walk and inspected the Amahagger herds, andalso their cultivated lands. They have two breeds of cattle, one largeand angular, with no horns, but yielding beautiful milk; and the other,a red breed, very small and fat, excellent for meat, but of no value formilking purposes. This last breed closely resembles the Norfolk red-polestrain, only it has horns which generally curve forward over the head,sometimes to such an extent that they have to be cut to prevent themfrom growing into the bones of the skull. The goats are long-haired, andare used for eating only, at least I never saw them milked. As for theAmahagger cultivation, it is primitive in the extreme, being all doneby means of a spade made of iron, for these people smelt and work iron.This spade is shaped more like a big spear-head than anything else, andhas no shoulder to it on which the foot can be set. As a consequence,the labour of digging is very great. It is, however, all done by themen, the women, contrary to the habits of most savage races, beingentirely exempt from manual toil. But then, as I think I have saidelsewhere, among the Amahagger the weaker sex has established itsrights.
At first we were much puzzled as to the origin and constitution ofthis extraordinary race, points upon which they were singularlyuncommunicative. As the time went on--for the next four days passedwithout any striking event--we learnt something from Leo's lady friendUstane, who, by the way, stuck to that young gentleman like his ownshadow. As to origin, they had none, at least, so far as she wasaware. There were, however, she informed us, mounds of masonry and manypillars, near the place where _She_ lived, which was called Kôr, andwhich the wise said had once been houses wherein men lived, and it wassuggested that they were descended from these men. No one, however,dared go near these great ruins, because they were haunted: they onlylooked on them from a distance. Other similar ruins were to be seen, shehad heard, in various parts of the country, that is, wherever one ofthe mountains rose above the level of the swamp. Also the caves in whichthey lived had been hollowed out of the rocks by men, perhaps the samewho built the cities. They themselves had no written laws, only custom,which was, however, quite as binding as law. If any man offendedagainst the custom, he was put to death by order of the Father of the"Household." I asked how he was put to death, and she only smiled andsaid that I might see one day soon.
They had a Queen, however. _She_ was their Queen, but she was veryrarely seen, perhaps once in two or three years, when she came forth topass sentence on some offenders, and when seen was muffled up in a bigcloak, so that nobody could look upon her face. Those who waited uponher were deaf and dumb, and therefore could tell no tales, but it wasreported that she was lovely as no other woman was lovely, or ever hadbeen. It was rumoured also that she was immortal, and had power overall things, but she, Ustane, could say nothing of all that. What shebelieved was that the Queen chose a husband from time to time, and assoon as a female child was born, this husband, who was never again seen,was put to death. Then the female child grew up and took the place ofthe Queen when its mother died, and had been buried in the great caves.But of these matters none could speak with certainty. Only _She_ wasobeyed throughout the length and breadth of the land, and to questionher command was instant death. She kept a guard, but had no regulararmy, and to disobey her was to die.
I asked what size the land was, and how many people lived in it. Sheanswered that there were ten "Households," like this that she knewof, including the big "Household," where the Queen was, that all the"Households" lived in caves, in places resembling this stretch of raisedcountry, dotted about in a vast extent of swamp, which was only to bethreaded by secret paths. Often the "Households" made war on each otheruntil _She_ sent word that it was to stop, and then they instantlyceased. That and the fever which they caught in crossing the swampsprevented their numbers from increasing too much. They had no connectionwith any other race, indeed none lived near them, or were able to threadthe vast swamps. Once an army from the direction of the great river(presumably the Zambesi) had attempted to attack them, but they got lostin the marshes, and at night, seeing the great balls of fire that moveabout there, tried to come to them, thinking that they marked the enemycamp, and half of them were drowned. As for the rest, they soon died offever and starvation, not a blow being struck at them. The marshes, shetold us, were absolutely impassable except to those who knew the paths,adding, what I could well believe, that we should never have reachedthis place where we then were had we not been brought thither.
These and many other things we learnt from Ustane during the four days'pause before our real adventures began, and, as may be imagined, theygave us considerable cause for thought. The whole thing was exceedinglyremarkable, almost incredibly so, indeed, and the oddest part of it wasthat so far it did more or less correspond to the ancient writing on thesherd. And now it appeared that there was a mysterious Queen clothed b
yrumour with dread and wonderful attributes, and commonly known by theimpersonal, but, to my mind, rather awesome title of _She_. Altogether,I could not make it out, nor could Leo, though of course he wasexceedingly triumphant over me because I had persistently mocked at thewhole thing. As for Job, he had long since abandoned any attempt to callhis reason his own, and left it to drift upon the sea of circumstance.Mahomed, the Arab, who was, by the way, treated civilly indeed, butwith chilling contempt, by the Amahagger, was, I discovered, in a greatfright, though I could not quite make out what he was frightened about.He would sit crouched up in a corner of the cave all day long, callingupon Allah and the Prophet to protect him. When I pressed him about it,he said that he was afraid because these people were not men or women atall, 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. Andso the time went on, till the night of the fourth day after Billali hadleft, when something happened.
We three and Ustane were sitting round a fire in the cave just beforebedtime, when suddenly the woman, who had been brooding in silence,rose, and laid her hand upon Leo's golden curls, and addressed him. Evennow, when I shut my eyes, I can see her proud, imperial form, clothedalternately in dense shadow and the red flickering of the fire, as shestood, the wild centre of as weird a scene as I ever witnessed, anddelivered herself of the burden of her thoughts and forebodings in akind of 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--oh, 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. Yet didst thou turn and call upon me, and let thine eyes wander 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 wasso much musical gibberish to us, for all that we understood of what shewas talking about, and seemed to fix her flashing eyes upon the deepshadow before her. Then in a moment they acquired a vacant, terrifiedstare, as though they were striving to realise some half-seen horror.She lifted her hand from Leo's head, and pointed into the darkness. Weall looked, and could see nothing; but she saw something, or thought shedid, and something evidently that affected even her iron nerves, for,without another sound, down she fell senseless between us.
Leo, who was growing really attached to this remarkable young person,was in a great state of alarm and distress, and I, to be perfectlycandid, was in a condition not far removed from superstitious fear. Thewhole scene was an uncanny one.
Presently, however, she recovered, and sat up with an extraordinaryconvulsive shudder.
"What didst thou mean, Ustane?" asked Leo, who, thanks to years oftuition, spoke Arabic very prettily.
"Nay, my chosen," she answered, with a little forced laugh. "I did butsing 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 theface.
"Nay," she answered again, "I saw naught. Ask me not what I saw. Whyshould I fright ye?" And then, turning to Leo with a look of the mostutter tenderness that I ever saw upon the face of a woman, civilisedor savage, she took his head between her hands, and kissed him on theforehead as a mother might.
"When I am gone from thee, my chosen," she said; "when at night thoustretchest out thine hand and canst not find me, then shouldst thouthink at times of me, for of a truth I love thee well, though I be notfit to wash thy feet. And now let us love and take that which is givenus, and be happy; for in the grave there is no love and no warmth, norany touching of the lips. Nothing perchance, or perchance but bittermemories of what might have been. To-night the hours are our own, howknow we to whom they shall belong to-morrow?"