THE SACRIFICE
After a solemn pause, Dacha rose and said in an icy voice:
“I hear the god calling us. Let us pass into the presence of the god
and make offering of the yearly sacrifice.”
Then a procession was formed. Dacha and Dramana went first, Hans and I
followed next, and after us came all who had been at the feast, to a
total of about fifty people.
“Baas,” whispered Hans, “after I had drunk that stuff, which
was so nice and warming that I wished you had let me have more of it,
your Reverend Father came and talked to me.”
“And what did he say to you, Hans?”
“He said, Baas, that we were going into very queer company and had
better keep our eyes skinned. Also that it would be wise not to
interfere in matters that did not concern us.”
I reflected to myself that within an hour I had received advice of the
same sort from a purely terrestrial source, which was an odd
coincidence, unless indeed Hans had overheard or absorbed it
subconsciously. To him I only observed, however, that such mandates
must be obeyed, and that whatever chanced, he would do well to sit
quite still, keeping his pistol ready, but only use it in case of
absolute necessity to save ourselves from death.
The procession left the hall by a back entrance behind the table at
which we had sat, and entered a kind of tunnel that was lit with lamps,
though whether this was hollowed in the rock or built of blocks of
stone I am not sure. After walking for about fifty paces down this
tunnel, suddenly we found ourselves in a great cavern, also dimly lit
with lamps, mere spots of light in the surrounding blackness.
Here all the priests, including Dacha, left us; at least, peering
about, I could not see any of them. The women alone remained in the
cave, where they knelt down singly and at a distance from each other
like scattered worshippers in a dimly lit cathedral when no service is
in progress.
Dramana, to whose charge we seemed to have been consigned, led us to a
stone bench upon which she took her seat with us. I noted that she did
not kneel and worship like the others. For a while we remained thus in
silence, staring at the blackness in front where no lamps burned. It
was an eerie business in such surroundings that I confess began to get
upon my nerves. At length I could bear it no longer, and in a whisper
asked Dramana whether anything was about to happen, and if so, what.
“The sacrifice is about to happen,” she whispered back. “Be
silent, for here the ears of the god are everywhere.”
I obeyed, thinking it safer, and another ten minutes or so went by in
an intolerable stillness.
“When does the play begin, Baas?” muttered Hans in my ear. (Once I
had taken him to a theatre in Durban to improve his mind, and he
thought that this was another, as indeed it was, if of an unusual
sort.)
I kicked him on the shins to keep him quiet, and just then at a
distance I heard the sound of chanting. It was a weird and melancholy
music that seemed to swing backwards and forwards between two bands of
singers, each strophe and antistrophe, if those are the right words,
ending in a kind of wail or cry of despair which turned my blood cold.
When this had gone on for a little while, I thought that I saw figures
moving through the gloom in front of us. So did Hans, for he whispered:
“The Hairy People are here, Baas.”
“Can you see them?” I asked in the same low voice.
“I think so, Baas. At any rate, I can smell them.”
“Then keep your pistol ready,” I answered.
A moment later I saw a lighted torch floating in the air in front of
us, though the bearer of it I could not see. The torch was bent
downwards, and I heard the sound of kindling taking fire. A little
flame sprang up revealing a pile of logs arranged for burning, and
beyond it the tall form of Dacha wearing a strange headdress and white,
priestlike robes, different from those in which he had been clad at the
feast. Between his hands, which he held in front of him, was a white
human skull reversed, I mean that its upper part was towards the floor.
“Burn, Dust of Illusion, burn,” he cried, “and show us our
desires,” and out of the skull he emptied a quantity of powder on to
the pile of wood.
A dense, penetrating smoke arose which seemed to fill the cave, vast
though it was, and blot out everything. It passed away and was followed
by a blaze of brilliant flame that lit up all the place and revealed a
terrific spectacle.
Behind the fire, at a distance of ten paces or so, was an awful object,
an appalling black figure at least twelve feet in height, a figure of
Heu-Heu as we had seen him depicted in the Cave of the Berg, only there
his likeness was far too flattering. For this was the very image of the
devil as he might have been imagined by a mad monk, and from his eyes
shot a red light.
As I have said before, the figure was like to that of a huge gorilla
and yet no ape but a man, and yet no man but a fiend. There was the
long gray hair growing in tufts about the body. There was the great,
red, bushy beard. There were the enormous limbs and the long arms and
the hands with claws on them where the thumbs should be, and the webbed
fingers. The bull neck on the top of which sat the small head that
somehow resembled an old woman’s with a hooked nose; the huge mouth
from which the baboon-like tushes protruded, the round, massive,
able-looking brow, the deepset glaring eyes, now alight with red fire,
the cruel smile—all were there intensified. There, too, was the shape
of a dead man into the breast of which the clawed foot was driven, and
in the left hand the head that had been twisted from the man’s body.
Oh! evidently the painter of the picture in the Berg can have been no
Bushman as once I had supposed, but some priest of Heu-Heu whom fate or
chance had brought thither in past ages, and who had depicted it to be
the object of his private worship. When I saw the thing I gasped aloud
and felt as though I should fall to the ground through fear, so hellish
was it. But Hans gripped my arm and said:
“Baas, be not afraid. It is not alive; it is but a thing of stone and
paint with fire set within.”
I stared again; he was right.
_Heu-Heu was but an idol! Heu-Heu did not live except in the hearts of
his worshippers!_
Only out of what Satanic mind had this image sprung?
I sighed with relief as this knowledge came home to me, and began to
observe details. There were plenty to be seen. For instance, on either
side of the statue stood a line of the hideous Hairy Folk, men to the
right and women to the left, with white cloths tied about their
middles. In front of this line behind their high priest, Dacha, were
the other priests, Heu-Heu’s clergy, and on a raised table behind them
just at the foot of the base of the statue, which I now saw stood upon
a kind of pedestal so as to make it more dominant, lay a dead body,
that of one of the Hairy women, as the clear light of the flame
revealed.
“Baas,” said Hans again, “I believe that is the gorilla-woman
I shot in the river. I seem to know her pretty face.”
“If so, I hope we shall not join her on that table presently,” I
answered.
After this suddenly I went mad; everybody went mad. I suppose that the
vapour from that accursed powder had got into our brains. Had not Dacha
called it the “Dust of Illusion”? Certainly of illusions there were
plenty, most of them bad, like those of a nightmare.
Still, before they possessed me completely, I had the sense to
understand what was happening to me and to grip hold of Hans, who I saw
was going mad also, and command him to sit quiet. Then came the
illusions which really I can’t describe to you. You fellows have read
of the effects of opium smoking; well, it was that kind of thing, only
worse.
I dreamed that Heu-Heu got off his pedestal and came dancing down the
hall, also that he bent over me and kissed me on the forehead. In fact,
I think it was Dramana who kissed me, for she, too, had gone mad.
Everything that I had done bad in my life reënacted itself in my
mind and, all put together, seemed to make me a sinner indeed, because
you see the good was entirely omitted. The Hairy Folk began an infernal
dance before the statue; the women around us raved and shouted with
extraordinary expressions upon their faces; the priests waved their
arms and set up yells of adoration as did those of Baal in the Old
Testament. In short, literally there was the devil to pay.
Yet strangely enough it was all wildly, deliriously exciting and really
I seemed to enjoy it. It shows how wicked we must be at bottom. A sight
of hell while you remain on the _terra firma_ of our earth is not
uninteresting, even though you be temporarily affected by its
atmosphere.
Presently the nightmare came to an end, suddenly as it had commenced,
and I woke up to find my head on Dramana’s shoulder, or hers on mine, I
forget which, with Hans engaged in kissing my boot under the impression
that it was the chaste brow of some black maiden whom he had known
about thirty years before. I kicked him on his snub nose, whereon he
rose and apologized, remarking that this was the strongest
_dacca_—the hemp which the natives smoke with intoxicating
effects—that he had ever tasted.
“Yes,” I answered, “and now I understand where Zikali’s
magic comes from. No wonder he wants more of the leaves of that tree
and thought it worth while to send us so far to get them.”
Then I ceased talking, for something in the atmosphere of the place
absorbed my attention. A sudden chill seemed to have fallen upon it and
its occupants who, in strange contrast to their recent excesses, now
appeared to be possessed by the very spirit of Mrs. Grundy. There they
stood, exuding piety at every pore and gazing with rapt countenances at
the hideous image of their god. Only to me those countenances had grown
very cruel. It was as though they awaited the consummation of some
dreadful drama with a kind of cold joy, which, of course, may have been
an aftermath of their unholy intoxication. It was the scene at the
feast repeated but with a difference. There they had been drunken with
liquor and sobered by the potent stuff they had swallowed after it; now
they had been made drunken with fumes and were sobered by I knew not
what. Their master Satan, perhaps!
The fire still burnt brightly though it gave off no more of these
fumes, being fed I suppose with natural fuel, and by the light of it I
saw that Dacha was addressing the image with impassioned gestures. What
he said I do not know, for my ears were still buzzing and of it I could
hear nothing. But presently he turned and pointed to us and then began
to beckon.
“What is it he wants us to do?” I asked of Dramana who now was
seated at my side, a perfect model of propriety.
“He says that you must come up and make your offering to the god.”
“What offering?” I asked, thinking that perhaps it would be of a
painful nature.
“The offering of the sacred fire that the Lord of Fire,” and she
pointed to Hans, “bears about with him.”
I was puzzled for a moment till Hans remarked:
“I think she means the matches, Baas.”
Then I understood, and bade him produce a new box of Best Wax Vestas
and hold it out in his hand. Thus armed we advanced and, passing round
the fire, bowed, as the Bible potentate whom the Prophet cured
bargained he should be allowed to do in the House of Rimmon, to the
beastly effigy of Heu-Heu. Then in obedience to the muttered directions
of Dacha, Hans solemnly deposited the box of matches upon the stone
table, after which we were allowed to retreat.
Anything more ridiculous than this scene it is impossible to imagine. I
suppose that its intense absurdity was caused, or at any rate
accentuated by its startling and indeed horrible contrasts. There was
the towering and demoniacal idol; there were the rogue priests, their
faces alight with a fierce fanaticism; there, looking only half human,
were the long lines of savage Hairy Folk; there was the burning fire
reflecting itself to the farthest recesses of the cavern and showing
the forms of the scattered worshippers.
Finally there was myself, a bronzed and tattered individual, and the
dirty, abject-looking Hans holding in his hand that absurd box of
matches which finally he deposited in the exact middle of the stone
table about six inches from the swollen body of the aboriginal whom he
had shot in the river. In those vast surroundings this box looked so
lonely and so small that the sight of it moved me to internal
convulsions. Shaking with hysterical laughter I returned to my seat as
quickly as I could, dragging Hans after me, for I saw that his case was
the same, although fortunately it is not the custom of Hottentots to
burst into open merriment.
“What will Heu-Heu do with the matches, Baas?” asked Hans.
“Surely there must be plenty of fire where he is, Baas.”
“Yes, lots,” I replied with energy, “but perhaps of another
sort.”
Then I observed that Dacha was pointing to the right and that the eyes
of all present were fixed in that direction.
“The sacrifice comes,” murmured Dramana, and as she spoke a woman
appeared, a tall woman covered with a white robe or veil, who was led
forward by two of the Hairy People. She was brought to the front of the
table on which lay the body and the matches, and there stood quite
still.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“Last year’s bride, with whom the priest has done and passes on
into the keeping of the god,” answered Dramana with a stony smile.
“Do you mean that they are going to kill the poor thing?” I said,
horrified.
“The god is about to take her into his keeping,” she replied
enigmatically.
At this moment one of the savage attendants snatched away the veil
which draped the victim, revealing a very beautiful woman clad in a
white kirtle which was cut low upon her breast and reached to her
knees. Tall and stately, she stood quite still before us, her black
hair streaming down upon her shoulders. Then, as though at some signal,
all the women in the audience stood up and screamed:
“Wed her to the god! Wed her to the god and let us drink of the cup
that through her unites us to the god!”
Two of the Hairy Folk drew near to the girl, each of whom had something
in his hand, though what it was at the moment I could not see, and
stood still, as though waiting for a sign. Then followed a pause during
which I glanced about me at the faces of the women, made hideous by the
unholy passions that raged within them, who stood with outstretched
arms pointing at the victim. They looked horrible, and I hated them,
all except Dramana, who, I noted with relief, had not cried aloud and
did not stretch out her hands like the rest.
What was I about to see? Some dreadful act of voodooism such as negroes
practise in Hayti and on the West Coast? Perhaps. If so I could not
bear it. Whatever the risk might be I could not bear it; almost
automatically my hand grasped the stock of my revolver.
Dacha seemed as though he were about to say something, a word of doom
mayhap. I measured the distance between me and himself with my eyes,
calculating where I should aim to put a bullet through his large head
and give the god a sacrifice which it did not expect. Indeed, had he
spoken such a word, without doubt I should have done it, for as you
fellows know I am handy with a pistol, and probably, as a result, never
have lived to tell you this story.
At this juncture, however, the victim waved her arms and said in a
loud, clear voice:
“I claim the ancient right to make my prayer to the god before I am
given to the god.”
“Speak on,” said Dacha, “and be swift.”
She turned and curtseyed to the hideous idol, then wheeled about again
and addressed it in form although really she was speaking to the
audience.
“O Fiend Heu-Heu,” she said in a voice filled with awful scorn and
bitterness, “whom my people worship to their ruin, I who was stolen
from my people come to thee because I would have none of yonder
high-priest and therefore must pay the price in blood. So be it, but
ere I come I have something to tell thee, O Heu-Heu, and something to
tell these priests who grow fat in wickedness. Hearken! A spirit is in
me, giving me sight. I see this place a sea of water, I see flames
bursting through the water, turning thy hideous effigy to dust and
burning up thy evil servants, so that not one of them remains. The
Prophecy! The Prophecy! Let all who hear me bethink them of the ancient
prophecy, for at length its hour is fulfilled.”
Then she stared towards Hans and myself, waving her arms, and I thought
was about to address us. If so, she changed her mind and did not.
So far the priests and the congregation had listened in the silence of
amazement, or perhaps of fear. Now, however, a howl of furious
execration broke from them, and when it died down I heard Dacha
shouting:
“Let this blaspheming witch be slain. Let the sacrifice be
accomplished!”
The two savages stepped towards her, and now I saw that what they held
in their hands were coils of rope with which doubtless she was to be
bound. If so, she was too swift for them, for with a great bound she
sprang upon the table where lay the body of the Hairy woman and the box
of matches. Next instant I saw a knife flashing in her hand; I suppose
it had been concealed somewhere in her dress. She lifted it and plunged
it to her heart, crying as she did so:
“My blood be on you, Priests of Heu-Heu!”
Then she fell down there upon the table and was still.
In the hush that followed I heard Hans say:
“That was a brave lady, Baas, and doubtless all she said will come
true. May I shoot that priest, Baas, or will you?”
“No,” I began, but before I could get out another word my voice was
overwhelmed by a tumult of shouts,
“The god has been robbed of his sacrifice and is hungry. Let the
strangers be offered to the god.”
These and other like things said the shouts.
Dacha looked towards us, hesitating, and I saw that it was time to act.
Rising, I called out:
“Know, O Dacha, that before one hand is laid upon us I will make you as
my companion, Lord-of-the-Fire, made the dog without your doors.”
Evidently Dacha believed me, for he grew quite humble. “Have no fear,
Lords,” he said. “Are you not our honoured guests and the
messengers of a Great One? Go in peace and safety.”
Then at his command or sign the brightly burning fire was scattered, so
that the cave grew almost dark, especially as some of the lights had
gone out.
“Follow me swiftly—swiftly,” said Dramana, and taking my hand
she led me away through the gloom.
Presently we found ourselves in the passage, though for aught I know it
was another passage; at any rate, it led to the hall where we had
feasted. This was now empty, although in it lights still burned.
Crossing it, Dramana conducted us back to the house, where a hasty
examination shewed us that our rifles were just as we had left them;
nothing had been touched. Here, seeing that we were quite alone, for
all had gone to the sacrifice, I spoke to her.
“Lady Dramana,” I said, “does my heart tell me truly or do I
only dream that you desire to depart from out of the shadow of
Heu-Heu?”
She glanced about her cautiously, then answered in a low voice: “Lord,
there is nothing that I desire so much—unless perchance it be
death,” she added with a sigh. “Hearken! Seven years ago I was
bound upon the Rock of Offering, where my sister will stand to-morrow,
having been chosen by the god and dedicated to him by the mad terror of
my people, which means, Lord, that I had been chosen by Dacha and
dedicated to Dacha.”
“Why, then, do you still live?” I asked, “seeing that she who
was chosen last year must be sacrificed this year.”
“Lord, am I not the daughter of the Walloo, the ruler of the people of
the Mainland, and might not the title to that rule be acquired through
me while I breathe? It is not the best of titles, it is true, because I
was born of a lesser wife of my father, the Walloo, whereas my sister
Sabeela is born of the great wife. Still, at a pinch, it might serve.
That is why I still live.”
“What then is Dacha’s plan, Lady Dramana?”
“It stands thus, Lord. Hitherto for many generations, it is said since
the great fire burned upon the island and destroyed the city, there
have been two governments in this land: that of the priests of Heu-Heu,
who govern the minds of its people, also the wild Wood Folk, and that
of the Walloos, who govern their bodies and are kings by ancient right.
Now Dacha, who, when he is not lost in drink or other follies, is
farseeing and ambitious, purposes to rule both minds and bodies and it
may be to bring in new blood from outside our country and once more to
build up a great people, such as tradition tells we were in the
beginning, when we came here from the north or from the west. He does
but wait until he has married my sister, the lawful heiress to the
Walloo, my father, who by now must be an old and feeble man, to strike
his blow, and in her name to seize the government and power.
“The priests, as you have seen, are but few and cannot do this of their
own strength, but they command all the savage folk who are called the
Children of Heu-Heu. Now these people are very angry because the other
day one of their women was killed upon the river, she who lay on the
altar before the god, and this they think was done by the Walloo, not
understanding that it was your servant, the yellow man there, who slew
her. Or if they understand, they believe that he did so by the order of
Issicore who, we hear, is betrothed to my sister Sabeela.
“Therefore they wish to make a great war upon the Walloo under the
guidance of the priests of Heu-Heu, whom they call their Father,
because his image is like to them. Already their mankind are gathering
on the island, rowing themselves hither upon logs or bundles of reeds,
and by to-morrow night all will be collected. Then, after what is
called the Holy Marriage, when my sister Sabeela has been brought as an
offering by the Walloo and bound to the pillar between the Everlasting
Fires, led by Dacha they will attack the city on the mainland, which
they dare not do alone. It will surrender to them, and Dacha will kill
my old father and the lord Issicore who stands next to him, and any of
the ancient blood who cling to him, and cause himself to be declared
Walloo. After this his purpose is to poison the Forest folk as he well
knows how to do and as I have told you, perhaps to bring new blood into
the land which is rich and wide, and found a kingdom.
“A big scheme,” I said, not without admiration, for on hearing it,
to tell the truth, I began to conceive a certain respect for that
villain Dacha, who, at any rate, had ideas and presented a striking
contrast to the helpless and superstition-ridden inhabitants of the
mainland.
“But, Lady,” I went on, “what is to happen to me and to my
companion who is named Lord-of-the-Fire?”
“I do not know, Lord, who have had little talk with Dacha since you
came, or with any to whom he reveals his secrets. I think, however,
that he is afraid of you, believing you to be magicians, or in league
with the greatest of magicians, the prophet Zikali, who dwells in the
south, with whom the priests of Heu-Heu communicate from time to time.
Also it is probable that he holds that you may be able to help him to
build up a nation and that therefore he would wish to keep you in his
service in this country, only killing you if you try to escape. On the
other hand, when the Wood Folk come to understand that it was really
you, or one of you, who killed the woman, they may clamour for your
lives. Then, if he thinks it wisest to please them, at the great feast
which is called the Finishing of the Holy Marriage, you may be tied
upon the altar as a Sacrifice while the blood is drained from you, to
be drunk by the priests with the lips of Heu-Heu. Perhaps that matter
will be settled at the Council of the Priests to-morrow, Lord.”
“Thank you,” I said, “never mind the details.”
“Meanwhile,” she went on, “for the present you are safe.
Indeed I, who by my rank am the Mistress of Households, have been
commanded to honour you in every way, and to-morrow, when the priests
are engaged in preparations for the Holy Marriage, to show you all that
you would see, also to provide you with boughs from the Tree of
Illusions which Zikali the prophet desires.”
“Thank you,” I said again, “we shall be most happy to take a
walk with you, even if it rains, as I think from the sounds upon the
roof it is doing at present. Meanwhile, I understand that you wish to
get out of this place and to save your sister. Well, I may as well tell
you at once, Lady Dramana, that my companion, who chooses to assume the
shape of a yellow dwarf, and I, who choose to be as I am, _are_ in fact
great magicians with much more power than we seem to possess.
Therefore, it is quite possible that we may be able to help you in all
ways, and to do other things more remarkable. Yet we may need your aid,
since generally that which is mighty works through that which is small,
and what I want to know is whether we can count upon it.”
“To the death, Lord,” she answered.
“So be it, Dramana, for know that if you fail us certainly you will
die.”