which altitude the wretched savages were shivering even more with cold
than they had hitherto done with fear. The ship was then headed
straight for the sea, which she soon reached, and, speeding onward at
the rate of thirty miles an hour, her course was continued, accompanied
by a gradual descent until the land was lost sight of; when a wide sweep
was made, and, at a height of only one hundred feet above the waves, the
return journey was commenced. This experience proved sufficient, and
more than sufficient, for M'Bongwele; he was completely cowed; and when
he found himself hovering over the illimitable sea, without a sign of
land in any direction, he flung himself upon his knees before the
professor and piteously entreated to be restored to his home and people,
abjectly promising that he and they would be the willing slaves of the
White Spirits for ever; and as for the ruins, the Spirits might do
whatever they chose with them, freely and without let or hindrance.
This was all very well, but von Schalckenberg had not yet fully carried
out his programme; he had still one more item in the entertainment which
he was determined to produce, and which he fully believed would render
M'Bongwele's subjugation not only complete but permanent.
Accordingly, on returning to their starting-place (by which time it was
nearly dark), the demoralised warriors, who had all but given up their
king as lost, were set to work by von Schalckenberg's orders to collect
wood for a gigantic bonfire. This was soon done, and the fire was
kindled; but, much of the wood being green, an immense cloud of smoke
was raised, with very little flame, which exactly suited the professor's
purpose. When the fire was fairly alight, the troops were re-formed in
line as close to the ship as possible, and M'Bongwele and his suite were
arranged in position on the deck immediately beneath the pilot-house
walls. By this time it was perfectly dark, save for the starlight and
the flickering gleam of the bonfire; and the air was stark calm.
Gradually and imperceptibly the dense cloud of smoke which hung
motionless over the smouldering pile became faintly luminous. The
radiance grew stronger and stronger, and presently an immense circular
disc of light appeared reflected on the slowly-rising cloud of vapour,
in which a host of forms were indistinctly traceable. Another moment
and a loud ejaculation of astonishment burst from the savage spectators,
for, with another sudden brightening of the luminous disc there appeared
the phantom presentment of M'Bongwele's troops drawn up as they had
appeared a couple of hours before, when the king had first boarded the
_Flying Fish_ So clear and vivid was the representation that it met with
instant recognition, amid loud murmurs of amazement from the beholders;
the king being quite as strongly moved as any of his subjects.
"Do you recognise the vision?" demanded the professor sternly of
M'Bongwele.
"I do, I do. Those are the spirits of my bravest soldiers," murmured
the king. "Truly the Spirits of the Winds have wondrous powers."
"You say well," answered von Schalckenberg. "Now, look again and you
shall see a few of _our_ warriors."
As he spoke the picture became blurred and indistinct, prismatic colours
began to come and go upon the curtain of vapour, and suddenly out
flashed the image of a wide-stretching sun-lit plain, upon which were
drawn up on parade, in illimitable perspective, a countless host of
British troops, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, with bayonets, swords,
and lance-points gleaming in the sun, with colours uncased, guns
limbered up, and all apparently ready and waiting for the order to
march. So realistic was the picture that even the baronet and
Lethbridge could scarcely repress an exclamation of astonishment, and as
for M'Bongwele and his people, they were perfectly breathless with
surprise. The picture was allowed to remain clear, brilliant, and
distinct for some ten minutes, then the radiant disc rapidly faded until
it vanished altogether, and nothing remained but the red glimmer of the
smouldering fire.
A heavy sigh issued from M'Bongwele's breast, and he rose to his feet.
"It is enough," he said. "Let me go home."
He advanced gropingly to the gangway (for it was now very dark), when,
in an instant, every one of the electric lights in the ship flashed out
at their fullest brightness, brilliantly illuminating the deck, and
turning night into day for fully a mile round, and, under the clear
steely radiance thus unexpectedly furnished him, the king slowly made
his way to the ground, mounted his horse in silence, and galloped away
at the head of his followers. The illumination of the ship was
maintained until the cavalcade was well clear of the ruins, when the
side-ladder was drawn up, the lights extinguished, and M'Bongwele was
left to make the remainder of his way as best he could in the darkness.
"Well," said the professor as the quartette wended their way below to
dinner, "how have I managed?"
"Admirably," answered Sir Reginald and the colonel together. "Never,
surely," continued the latter, "was African king so completely overawed
in so short a time as this fellow has been to-day."
"We all, and I especially, owe you thanks, colonel, for the sublime
_sang froid_ with which you stood up and allowed yourself to be made a
target of to-day," said von Schalckenberg. "Believe me, I would never
have made the proposal I did had I suspected that the part of target
would have been so cleverly transferred to someone else. But the crafty
fellow evidently suspected what you English call `a plant'--a
prearranged plan--and he thought that by adopting the course he did he
would have us at advantage."
"Oh," laughed the colonel scornfully, "that was a mere trifle, less than
nothing. I saw that the fellow was confident of his skill as a marksman
and anxious to show off, so I felt perfectly easy in my mind. Had it
been one of our own men, now--" An expressive shrug of the shoulders
finished the sentence.
"Yes," remarked the baronet reflectively, "what a pity it is that they
are not trained to individually select and aim at a particular object.
If they were, no troops in the world could stand up for ten minutes
before them. But, speaking of troops, professor, what a master-stroke
that was of yours to give the darkies an opportunity of comparing their
own soldiers with ours. How on earth did you manage it?"
"Oh, easily enough," laughed the professor. "A magic lantern and a
couple of slides did the whole business. The throwing of the pictures
upon the smoke-wreath certainly enhanced its effectiveness a good deal,
but it is quite an old trick, which I have often done before with
excellent results. Everyone who is going much among savages ought to
include a lantern and an assortment of good startling slides in his
outfit if possible."
"But how did you get the first of your two slides? That was surely a
representation of M'Bongwele's own people."
"Certainly. And our friend Mildmay very cleverly secured it with a
camera which I set up and prepared for him in the pilot-house. He only
had to release a spring at the right moment, and the thing was done. He
developed the picture whilst we were making our little excursion out to
sea and back. Well, the whole thing was a farce; but I believe it has
effectually secured us from interruption during our researches among the
ruins; and if so, it was worth playing."
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
KING M'BONGWELE TURNS THE TABLES UPON HIS VISITORS.
In reaching his palace that night king M'Bongwele dismissed his
followers with but scant ceremony, and at once retired to rest. He
passed a very disturbed night of alternate sleeplessness and harassing
fitful dreams, and arose next morning in a particularly bad temper. He
was anxious, annoyed, and uneasy in the extreme at the unexpected and
unwelcome presence of these extraordinary visitants to his dominions--
these spirits, or men, whichever they happened to be, who had taken such
pains to show him that they despised his power, and were quite prepared
to ride rough-shod over him unless he slavishly conformed to all their
wishes; who had frightened and humiliated him in the presence of his
immediate followers and most powerful chiefs, and entailed upon him a
loss of prestige which it would be difficult if not impossible to
recover. He was childishly jealous of the slightest interference with
his supreme authority, and he fretted and chafed himself into a state of
fury almost bordering upon madness as he reflected upon the veiled
menaces to himself which had been only too distinctly recognisable in
every manifestation of these strangers' extraordinary power on the
preceding day. He recognised that their deliberate intention had been
to show him that during their sojourn in his country he must in all
respects conform to their wishes, and model his conduct strictly in
accordance with their ideas of what was right and proper, or take the
consequences. And what were those consequences likely to be? Judging
from what he had already seen, his dethronement and utter humiliation
seemed to be among the least severe of future possibilities. Instead of
remaining the irresponsible autocrat he had hitherto been, he would,
during the sojourn of these strangers in his vicinity, be obliged to
carefully weigh and consider his every word and action, in order that he
might neither say nor do anything which could by any possibility prove
distasteful to them. And if this state of servile, abject, slavish
submission was to be his condition during the period of their stay--
which might last the Great Fetisch himself only knew how long--his life
would not be worth having, it would simply be a grinding, insupportable
burden to him.
As these unwelcome reflections thronged through his mind he grew so
madly ferocious that he issued orders for the instant execution of
certain white prisoners which had fallen into his hands a few months
before, countermanding the order almost immediately afterwards--and,
happily, in good time--partly because they were women, and he still
hoped, notwithstanding present difficulties and frequent former
failures, to add them to his harem; and partly because he was under the
apprehension that, among their other attributes, his mysterious visitors
might possess that of omniscience, and, getting knowledge of the
execution, object to and call him to account for it. It was a similar
consideration alone which deterred him from solacing himself by the
impalement of half a dozen or so of his principal ministers, the entire
suite having an exceedingly lively time of it that morning, and being
infinitely thankful when they were at last dismissed with whole skins.
The question which harassed and perplexed M'Bongwele for the remainder
of that day was: could the visit of these extraordinary beings be by any
means shortened or terminated? And, if so, how? Or if the visit could
not be cut short, was there any possibility of subjugating the visitors?
This particular African monarch possessed at least one virtue, that of
perseverance under difficulties. He was not at all the sort of man to
sit down and tamely submit to evils if he thought there was even the
most remote and slender possibility of overcoming them. He had, on a
previous occasion, encountered certain fair-skinned men so similar in
appearance, and in every other respect, except dress, to these present
troublesome visitors of his that they might well have been taken for
beings of the same race; yet _they_ had proved so thoroughly mortal that
he had had no difficulty whatever in disposing of them. True, he had
shot an arrow at one of these visitants yesterday, striking him fair
upon the breast, and the arrow, instead of piercing him through and
through, had fallen splintered to pieces at his feet. Yet this very
extraordinary incident was not, to M'Bongwele, wholly conclusive
evidence as to their invulnerability. Lualamba had on the previous day
made certain suggestive remarks tending to strengthen his monarch's
belief that if these persons could by any means be separated from the
huge structure which seemed to be their home they might possibly prove
to be very ordinary mortals after all. He was inclined to believe that
a great deal, if not the whole, of their power was centred in the
gigantic fabric which they called a ship. And, if that should indeed
prove to be the case, all that they had done on the previous day could
be done by anyone into whose hands the ship might happen to fall. It
could be done by _him_. As this reflection flashed across his brain he
pictured to himself the immense accession of power and prestige which
would come to him with the possession of that wonderful structure; of
the conquests it would enable him to make, and of the boundless
extension of his dominions which it would enable him to secure; and his
eyes flashed and his bosom heaved with unsuppressed excitement as he
inwardly vowed that he would achieve its possession or die in the
attempt. All the conditions of his life, he angrily told himself, had
been violently and permanently disarranged by the incidents of the
previous day; he had been publicly threatened; publicly terrified into a
cowardly and disgraceful state of submission; and it was quite
impossible that he could permanently continue as he then was. He must
fully recover all his lost prestige and add immeasurably to it, or must
be content to see some ambitious chief rise up and wrest the kingdom
from him. These presumptuous strangers had forced him into enmity
against them, and they must take the consequences.
Lualamba was one of M'Bongwele's most trusted chiefs, and shortly before
sunset he and the head witch-doctor were summoned to a special
conference with the king.
Meanwhile the travellers, having enjoyed a most excellent night's rest,
rose betimes in the morning and prepared for a thorough systematic
investigation of the ruins. They bathed and breakfasted in due course,
and then, armed to the teeth, set out upon a tour of general inspection,
the professor carrying his camera, and Sir Reginald his sketch-block and
colour-box, whilst Mildmay and the colonel, provided with a box-sextant
and a light measuring chain, set themselves the task of making a rough
survey of the ruins and a portion of the surrounding country. The tour
of the ruins, the taking of an occasional sketch or photograph, and the
making of the survey, kept the party fully occupied for the whole of the
first day; and they returned to the ship just before sunset, tired and
hungry, but thoroughly satisfied with their day's work, and fully
convinced that their success in penetrating to this interesting spot
would alone more than repay them for all the trouble and expense
connected with the outfit of the expedition. One important fact at
least had been clearly ascertained by them in the course of the day,
which was, that the ruins were extremely ancient, their antiquity being
demonstrated by the circumstance that during successive ages the soil
had gradually accumulated about the ruins until they were nearly half
buried. The most interesting discovery made by them during the day was
that of an enormous block of ruins, which, from its extent and the
imposing character of its architecture, they felt convinced must have
been a temple or other public building, and it was resolved that their
investigations should commence with it. It was situated about a mile
distant from the spot occupied by the _Flying Fish_, and their first
intention had been to move the ship somewhat nearer; but an inspection
of the intervening ground had shown it to be so encumbered with ruins
that it was soon apparent that she must be left where she was.
A very large amount of excavation--much more than they could possibly
manage alone--would be necessary before the lower portion of the walls
and the pavement of the building could be laid bare, and they decided to
go over to M'Bongwele's village on the following morning and arrange
with him if possible for the hire of some fifty or a hundred men. This,
however, proved to be unnecessary, for whilst they were at breakfast
next day the sound of a horn was heard without, and, going on deck, they
discovered Lualamba below in charge of a party of some twenty women
bearing a present of milk (in closely woven grass baskets), eggs, fowls,
and fruit, and a message from the king asking whether his visitors
required assistance of any kind in the pursuit of their investigations.
"Capital!" exclaimed the baronet when von Schalckenberg had translated
the message. "This is as it should be. Lower the ladder, professor,
and ask Lualamba to come on deck. We must send back a present to the
king in return for that which he has sent us; and we can at the same
time forward a message explaining our wants."
Lualamba quickly made his appearance on deck, where, after receiving a
further small present for himself and a cast-off soldier's coat,
battered cocked-hat, an old pair of uniform trousers, the seams of which
were trimmed with tarnished gold braid, and half a dozen strings of
beads, as a present for the king, the wants of the travellers were
explained to him. The chief shook his head; he feared it would be
difficult, if not impossible, to meet the wishes of the illustrious
strangers in the particular manner spoken of. The male inhabitants of
the village were all warriors, to whom work of any description would be
an unspeakable degradation. But he would see what could be done. If
women, now, would serve the strangers' purpose as well as men, the thing
could easily be arranged.
Had the travellers been less experienced than they were this suggestion
as to the employment of women would have come upon them as a surprise;
but they were well aware that among many savage races labour is looked
upon as degrading, and therefore imposed solely upon the women; so they
merely thanked Lualamba for his promise, and intimated that women would
serve them equally as well as men. Upon which Lualamba withdrew,
promising that a gang of at least fifty should be at the ruined temple--
or whatever it was--"before the sun reached the top of the sky;" in
other words, before noon. This promise was faithfully fulfilled, for at
eleven o'clock the explorers saw the gang of labourers come filing in
among the ruins, armed with rude wooden mattocks and spades, and
provided with large baskets in which to convey away the soil as it was
dug out. They were as unprepossessing a lot of specimens of female
humanity as could well be imagined. Naked, save for a filthy ragged
skin petticoat round their waists and reaching to the knee, their faces
wore, without exception, an expression of sullen stupidity, and they
looked as though they had never experienced a joyous moment in their
lives; but they were active and muscular, and soon showed that they
thoroughly understood how to use their clumsy tools to the best
advantage. They were led by and worked under the directorship of a
lean, shrunken, withered old grey-haired hag of superlative ugliness,
who did no work herself, but went constantly back and forth along the
line of workers, bearing in her hand a long thin pliant rattan, which
she did not hesitate to smartly apply to the shoulders of those who
seemed to her to be doing less than their fair share of the work in
hand. This bit of petty cruelty was, however, as a matter of course,
promptly stopped by the professor, who thereby won for himself a look of
withering scorn from the hag aforesaid, and glances of stupid wonder--in
which in some cases could be also detected faint traces of an expression
of gratitude--from the unfortunate sisterhood who laboured under her.
The amount of work performed was, as might naturally be expected,
nothing approaching to that which would have been accomplished in the
same time by the same number of white labourers; indeed, a gang of half
a dozen good honest hard-working English navvies would have accomplished
fully as much per diem as the fifty women who laboured among the ruins.
But the explorers were quite satisfied; they were in no particular
hurry; the climate was delightful; M'Bongwele was wonderfully civil,
sending large supplies of provisions, fruit, and milk to the ship daily,
accompanied by the most solicitous inquiries through Lualamba as to
whether all things were going well with his visitors. There was no
attempt whatever, so far as they could discover, to pry into their
doings, not a single warrior, save Lualamba, having been seen by them
since the day of the king's visit, and everything seemed to be
favourable to a thorough and leisurely execution of their purpose.
On the fourth day from the commencement of the excavation the explorers
were gratified by the uncovering of a yard or two of what appeared to be
a magnificent tesselated pavement of white and variegated marble; and by
the end of a fortnight fully half of its supposed area was exposed,
showing it to be of an entirely novel and exquisitely graceful design,
the intricate outline of the pattern being emphasised by the insertion
of plates of gold about a quarter of an inch wide between the tesserae.
The pavement was smooth, level, and in perfect preservation, and the
explorers were in the very highest of spirits at their exceptional good
luck.
At the outset of the work the four friends had been in the habit of
returning every day to the ship for luncheon, but as time passed on they
felt that to do this in the very hottest part of the day was a wholly
unnecessary waste of energy, and they accordingly transferred from the
ship to the scene of their operations a spacious umbrella-tent (that is
to say, a tent with a top but no sides), together with a small table and
four chairs. And under the shadow of this tent they were wont to
partake of the mid-day meal (usually a cold collation), which they
generally finished off with a cup of chocolate or coffee and a cigar,
the potables being prepared by a particular one of the women labourers,
who speedily developed quite a special aptitude for the task, and who at
length fell into the habit of regularly bringing with her, every day,
the milk needed for the purpose. The tent being pitched on a spot which
commanded a full view of the operations in progress, the quartette
gradually acquired the habit of lingering somewhat over their luncheon,
and especially over the final coffee and cigar, the inevitable result of
which was that, for the next hour or two, they experienced a feeling of
delicious languor and drowsiness, and an almost unconquerable
disinclination to exchange the grateful shade of the tent for the
scorching heat of the afternoon sun. At first they struggled resolutely
and manfully against this overpowering temptation to idleness; but
finding, or fancying, that they could supervise the work as efficiently
from the tent as they could at a yard or two from its shelter, they
gradually gave up the struggle, yielding day after day more completely
to the seductive feeling of lassitude which seemed to have laid hold
upon them.
Finally, one hot afternoon, overcome by the drowsy influence of the warm
perfumed air which played about their languid bodies, they all fell
asleep.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unknown to and wholly unsuspected by them, the old crone who was in
charge of the gang of female labourers had, for some days past, been
keeping a sharply watchful eye upon the investigators, and upon the day
in question she had been, if possible, more sharply watchful than ever.
So interested in them did she at last become that, turning her back upon
the women and leaving them to work or not as they saw fit, she advanced
until she entered the shadow of the tent, where she paused, eagerly
scanning the features of the slumberers. For some ten minutes or so she
stood motionless as a statue, her sunken glittering eyes turning from
one placid face to the other; then she stepped to the baronet's side
and, seizing him by the shoulder, shook him sharply. The sleeper might
have been dead for all the consciousness which he exhibited at her rude
touch. Another and more violent shake proved equally unproductive of
results. Then she passed on to the colonel, to Mildmay, and to the
professor, experimenting in like manner with each. If she wished to
arouse them, her efforts were useless; they were, one and all, locked
fast in the embrace of sleep--profound, unnatural, death-like sleep. A
scornful laugh grated harshly from her lips, and, wheeling sharply upon
her heel, she rejoined the gang of excavators, exclaiming:
"Cease this useless labour; there is no further need of it. The witch-
potion has done its work, and you may all return to the village. I go
to summon the warriors."
The women, without further ado, gathered up their tools and baskets,
and, breaking into a low monotonous song, to which their feet kept time,
took the trail leading to the village, and soon disappeared among the
scattered ruins and the bush which clustered thickly about them.