THE GOLD HOUSE.
“How you like Asiki-land, Major?” asked Jeekie, who had followed
him and was now leaning against a wall fanning himself feebly with his
great hand. “Funny place, isn’t it, Major? I tell you so before you
come, but you no believe me.”
“Very funny,” answered Alan, “so funny that I want to get
out.”
“Ah! Major, that what eel say in trap where he go after lob-worm, but he
only get out into frying pan after cook skin him alive-o. Ah! here come
cook—I mean Asika. She only stop shut up those stiff ’uns, who all
love lob-worm one day. Very pretty woman, Asika, but thank God she not
set cap at me, who like to be buried in open like Christian man.”
“If you don’t stop it, Jeekie,” replied Alan in a
concentrated rage, “I’ll see that you are buried just where you
are.”
“No offence, Major, no offence, my heart full and bubble up. I wonder
what Miss Barbara say if she see you mooing and cooing with dark-eyed
girl in gold snake skin?”
Just then the Asika arrived and by way of excuse for his flight, Alan
remarked to her that the treasure-hall was hot.
“I did not notice it,” she answered, “but he who is called my
husband, the Mungana, says the same. The Mungana is guardian of the
dead,” she explained, “and when he is required so to do, he sleeps in
the Place of the Treasure and gathers wisdom from the spirits of those
Munganas who were before him.”
“Indeed. And does he like that bed-chamber?”
“The Mungana likes what I like, not what he likes,” she replied
haughtily. “Where I send him to sleep, there he sleeps. But come,
Vernoon, and I will show you the Holy Water where Big Bonsa dwells; also
the house in which I have my home, where you shall visit me when you
please.”
“Who built this place?” asked Alan as she led him through more dark
and tortuous passages. “It is very great.”
“My spirit does not remember when it was built, Vernoon, so old is it,
but I think that the Asiki were once a big and famous people who traded
to the water upon the west, and even to the water on the east, and that
was how those white men became their slaves and the Munganas of their
queens. Now they are small and live only by the might and fame of Big
and Little Bonsa, not half filling the rich land which is theirs. But,”
she added reflectively and looking at him, “I think also that this is
because in the past fools have been thrust upon my spirit as Munganas.
What it needs is the wisdom of the white man, such wisdom as yours,
Vernoon. If that were added to my magic, then the Asiki would grow
great again, seeing that they have in such plenty the gold which you
have shown me the white man loves. Yes, they would grow great, and from
coast to coast the people should bow at the name of Bonsa and send him
their sons for sacrifice. Perhaps you will live to see that day,
Vernoon. Slave,” she added, addressing Jeekie, “set the mask upon your
lord’s head, for we come where women are.”
Alan objected, but she stamped her foot and said it must be so, having
once worn Little Bonsa, as her people told her he had done, his naked
face might not be seen. So Alan submitted to the hideous head-dress and
they entered the Asika’s house by some back entrance.
It was a place with many rooms in it, but they were all remarkable for
extreme simplicity. With a single exception no gilding or gold was to
be seen, although the food vessels were made of this material here as
everywhere. The chambers, including those in which the Asika lived and
slept, were panelled, or rather boarded with cedar wood that was almost
black with age, and their scanty furniture was mostly made of ebony.
They were very insufficiently lighted, like his own room, by means of
barred openings set high in the wall. Indeed gloom and mystery were the
keynotes of this place, amongst the shadows of which handsome,
half-naked servants or priestesses flitted to and fro at their tasks,
or peered at them out of dark corners. The atmosphere seemed heavy with
secret sin; Alan felt that in those rooms unnameable crimes and
cruelties had been committed for hundreds or perhaps thousands of
years, and that the place was yet haunted by the ghosts of them. At any
rate it struck a chill to his healthy blood, more even than had that
Hall of the Dead and of heaped-up golden treasure.
“Does my house please you?” the Asika asked of him.
“Not altogether,” he answered, “I think it is dark.”
“From the beginning my spirit has ever loved the dark, Vernoon. I think
that it was shaped in some black midnight.”
They passed through the chief entrance of the house which had pillars of
woodwork grotesquely carved, down some steps into a walled and roofed-in
yard where the shadows were even more dense than in the house they had
left. Only at one spot was there light flowing down through a hole in
the roof, as it did apparently in that hall where Alan had found the
Asika sitting in state. The light fell on to a pedestal or column made
of gold which was placed behind an object like a large Saxon font, also
made of gold. The shape of this column reminded Alan of something,
namely of a very similar column, although fashioned of a different
material which stood in the granite-built office of Messrs. Aylward &
Haswell in the City of London. Nor did this seem wonderful to him,
since on top of it, squatting on its dwarf legs, stood a horrid but
familiar thing, namely Little Bonsa herself come home at last. There she
sat smiling cruelly, as she had smiled from the beginning, forgetful
doubtless of her wanderings in strange lands, while round her stood a
band of priests armed with spears.
Followed by the Asika and Jeekie, Alan walked up and looked her in the
face, and to his excited imagination she appeared to grin at him in
answer. Then while the priests prostrated themselves, he examined the
golden basin or laver, and saw that at the further side of it was a
little platform approached by steps. On the top of these golden steps
were two depressions such as might have been worn out in the course of
ages by persons kneeling there. Also the flat edge of the basin which
stood about thirty inches above the level of the topmost step, was
scored as though by hundreds of sword cuts which had made deep lines in
the pure metal. The basin itself was empty.
Seeing that these things interested him, the Asika volunteered the
information through Jeekie, that this was a divining-bowl, and that if
those who went before her had wished to learn the future, they caused
Little Bonsa to float in it and found out all they wanted to know by
her movements. She, however, she added, had other and better methods of
learning things that were predestined.
“Where does the water come from?” asked Alan thoughtlessly
searching the bowl for some tap or inlet.
“Out of the hearts of men,” she answered with a low and dreadful
laugh. “These marks are those of swords and every one of them means a
life.” Then seeing that he looked incredulous she added, “Stay, I
will show you. Little Bonsa must be thirsty who has fasted so long, also
there are matters that I desire to know. Come hither—you, and you,” and
she pointed at hazard to the two priests who knelt nearest to her, “and
do you bid the executioner bring his axe,” she went on to a third.
The dark faces of the men turned ashen, but they made no effort to
escape their doom. One of them crept up the steps and laid his neck
upon the edge of gold, while the other, uttering no word, threw himself
on his face at the foot of them, waiting his turn. Then a door opened
and there appeared a great and brutal-looking fellow, naked except for
a loin cloth, who bore in his hand a huge weapon, half knife and half
axe.
First he looked at the Asika, who nodded almost imperceptibly, then
sprang on to a prolongation of the golden steps, bowed to Little Bonsa
on her column behind and heaved up his knife.
Now for the first time Alan really understood what was about to happen,
and that what he had imagined a stage rehearsal, was to become a
hideous murder.
“Stop!” he shouted in English, being unable to remember the native
word.
The executioner paused with his axe poised in mid-air; the victim turned
his head and looked, as though surprised; the second victim and the
priests their companions looked also. Jeekie fell on to his knees and
burst into fervent prayer addressed apparently to Little Bonsa. The
Asika smiled and did nothing.
Again the weapon was lifted and as he felt that words were no longer of
any use, even if he could find them, Alan took refuge in action.
Springing on to the other side of the little platform, he hit out with
all his strength across the kneeling man. Catching the executioner on
the point of the chin, he knocked him straight backwards in such
fashion that his head struck upon the floor before any other portion of
his body, so that he lay there either dead or stunned. Alan never
learned which, since the matter was not thought of sufficient
importance to be mentioned.
At this sight the Asika burst into a low laugh, then asked Alan why he
had felled the executioner. He answered because he would not stand by
and see two innocent men butchered.
“Why not,” she said in an astonished voice; “if Little Bonsa,
whose priests they are, needs them, and I, who am the Mouth of the gods
declare that they should die? Still, she has been in your keeping for a
long while and you may know her will, so if you wish it, let them live.
Or perhaps you require other victims,” and she fixed her eyes upon
Jeekie with a glance of suggestive hope.
“Oh my golly!” gasped Jeekie in English, “tell her not for
Joe, Major, tell her most improper. Say Yellow God my dearest friend and
go mad as hatter if my throat cut——”
Alan stopped his protestations with a secret kick.
“I choose no victims,” he broke in, “nor will I see
man’s blood shed—to me it is _orunda_—unholy; I may not
look on human blood, and if you cause me to do so, Asika, I shall hate
you because you make me break my oath.”
The Asika reflected for a moment, while Jeekie behind muttered between
his chattering teeth:
“Good missionary talk that, Major. Keep up word in season, Major. If she
make Christian martyr of Jeekie, who get you out of this confounded
hole?”
Then the Asika spoke.
“Be it as you will, for I desire neither that you should hate me, nor
that you should look on that which is unlawful for your eyes to see. The
feasts and ceremonies you must attend, but if I can help it, no victim
shall be slain in your presence, not even that whimpering hound, your
servant,” she added with a contemptuous glance at Jeekie, “who it
seems, fears to give his life for the glory of the god, but who because
he is yours, is safe now and always.”
“That _very_ satisfactory,” said Jeekie, rising from his
knees, his face wreathed in smiles, for he knew well that a decree of
the Asika could not be broken. Then he began to explain to the
priestess that it was not fear of losing his own life that had moved
him, but the certainty that this occurrence would disagree morally with
Little Bonsa, whose entire confidence he possessed.
Taking no notice of his words, with a slight reverence to the fetish,
she passed on, beckoning to Alan. As he went by the two prostrate
priests whose lives he had saved, lifted their heads a little and
looked at him with heartfelt gratitude in their eyes; indeed one of
them kissed the place where his foot had trodden. Jeekie, following,
gave him a kick to intimate that he was taking a liberty, but at the
same time stooped down and asked the man his name. It occurred to him
that these rescued priests might some day be useful.
Alan followed her through a kind of swing door which opened into another
of the endless halls, but when he looked for her there she was nowhere
to be seen. A priest who was waiting beyond the door bowed and informed
him that the Asika had gone to her own place, and would see him that
evening. Then bowing again he led them back by various passages to the
room where they had slept.
“Jeekie,” said Alan after their food had been brought to them, this
time, he observed, by men, for it was now past midday, “you were born in
Asiki-land; tell me the truth of this business. What does that woman
mean when she talks about her spirit having been here from the
beginning.”
“She mean, Major, that every time she die her soul go into someone else,
whom priests find out by marks. Also Asika always die young, they never
let her become old woman, but how she die and where they bury her, no
one know ’cept priests. Sometimes she have girl child who become Asika
after her, but if they have boy child, they kill him. I think this
Asika daughter of her who make love to your reverend uncle. All that
story ’bout her mother not being married, lies, and all her story lies
too, she often marry.”
“But how about the spirit coming back, Jeekie?”
“’Spect that lie too, Major, though she think it solemn fact.
Priests teach her all those old things. Still,” he added doubtfully,
“Asika great medicine-woman, and know a lot we don’t know,
can’t say how. Very awkward customer, Major.”
“Quite so, Jeekie, I agree with you. But to come to the point, what is
her game with me?”
“Oh! Major,” he answered with a grin, “_that_ simple
enough. She tired of black man, want change, mean to marry you according
to law, that is when Mungana dies, and he die jolly quick now. She
mustn’t kill him, but polish him off all the same, stick him to sleep
with those dead ’uns, till he go like drunk man and see things and
drown himself. Then she marry you. But till he dead, you all right, she
only talk and make eyes, ’cause of Asiki law, not ’cause she want to
stop there.”
“Indeed, Jeekie, and how long do you think that Mungana will last?”
“Perhaps three months, Major, and perhaps two. Think not more than two.
Strong man, but he look devilish dicky this morning. Think he begin see
snakes.”
“Very well, Jeekie. Now listen to me—you’ve got to get us out
of Asiki-land by this day two months. If you don’t, that lady will do
anything to oblige me and no doubt there are more executioners left.”
“Oh! Major, don’t talk like silly fool. Jeekie always hate fools
and suffer them badly—like holy first missionary bishop. You know very
well this no place for ultra-Christian man like Jeekie, who only come
here to please you. Both in same bag, Major, if I die, you die and
leave Miss Barbara up gum tree. I get you out if I can. But this stuff
the trouble,” and he pointed to the bags of gold. “Not want to leave
all that behind after such arduous walk. No, no, I try get you out,
meanwhile you play game.”
“The game! What game, Jeekie?”
“What game? Why, Asika-game of course. If she sigh, you sigh; if she
look at you, you look at her; if she squeeze hand, you squeeze hand; if
she kiss, you kiss.”
“I am hanged if I do, Jeekie.”
“Must, Major; must or never get out of Asiki-land. What all that
matter?” he added confidentially. “Miss Barbara never know. Jeekie
doesn’t split, also quite necessary in situation, and you can’t be
married till that Mungana dead. All matter business, Major; make time
pass pleasant as well. Asika jolly enough if you stroke her fur right
way, but if you put her back up—oh Lor’! No trouble, sit and smile and
say, ‘Oh, ducky, how beautiful you are!’ _that_ not hurt
anybody.”
In spite of himself Alan burst out laughing.
“But how about the Mungana?” he asked.
“Mungana, he got take that with rest. Also I try make friends with that
poor devil. Tell him it all my eye. Perhaps he believe me—not sure. If
he me, I no believe _him_. Mungana,” he added oracularly,
“Mungana take his chance. What matter? In two months’ time he
nothing but gold figure, No. 2403; just like one mummy in museum. Now I
try catch my ma. I hear she alive somewhere. They tell me she used keep
lodging house for Bonsa pilgrim, but steal grub, say it cat, all that
sort of thing, and get run in as thief. Afraid my ma come down very
much in world, not society lady now, shut up long way off in suburb.
Still p’raps she useful so best send her message by p’liceman, say how
much I love her; say her dear little Jeekie turn up again just to see
her sweet face. Only don’t know if she swallow that or if they let her
out prison unless I pay for all she prig.”