THE CATACLYSM THE PRIESTESS "LOOK AND FORGET"
Now gazing down full upon me as though in exultation was again the
awful face of the Snake, with its diadem the great, bright diamond. Its
glare hurt me, and I tried to move my head, but in vain. I was tied
fast.
And now I realized that this was no part of an awful dream, but that I
lay a hopeless victim in the place of the tortured man I had seen but a
day before.
And I knew that I was no longer alone, for though I could see nothing
but the grim idol, I could hear around me the murmur of many tongues.
Low, but vast in volume, it seemed as though thousands were there below
me, hushed and waiting for the consummation of the sacrifice. At times
the murmur rose to a mutter as of distant thunder, then again it would
be hushed almost into dead silence.
I could not speak or move. I could only lie inert and helpless, filled
with the agony of despair, with closed eyes awaiting the stroke, and
praying silently that it would come before the mutilation I had seen on
the other face.
Now came a single hoarse voice near me intoning words in a chant; and
then in response broke out the deep roar of a multitude of voices!
Higher and higher it rose until the air vibrated with its thunder, then
again it would die away, fainter and fainter till it was nothing but as
the sighing of wind through dead men's bones.
Again and again chant and response broke forth, and now too I could
distinguish much of its meaning, for the tongue was that of Inyati.
A song of supplication it seemed to me, a song for the Snake's wrath to
be appeased to accept the sacrifice offered it, and to send rain upon
their dried up fields.
Now it died utterly away, and sweat broke from me in agony as I waited
for I knew not what. I tried to make up my mind to die calmly, to
resign myself to the inevitable; but my period of liberty and my new-
found strength had brought back the old love of life that had burned
strong in me before my captivity, and my whole being cried out
passionately against this awful end.
Still there was silence, silence for a seeming eternity of waiting for
the sharp sting of death . . . and then another voice lifted as though
in invocation. Solemn, loud, clear and sonorous, the measured accents
rang forth, from close beside me; a voice of unearthly beauty chanting
a rhythmic sentence or two, repeated again and again. No hoarse voice
of a man this, but of a woman . . . a priestess . . . calling down the
fires of Baal to consume the sacrifice.
And, as if in response, came now the peal of heavy thunder.
I had been in terror of the knife before, but had lain silent and with
closed eyes awaiting the end, but as the terrible significance of the
song of invocation reached me, a hoarse cry of horror broke from my
parched throat, and I again tried in vain to struggle free. For now my
staring eyes confirmed the terrible thought that had come to me. The
sun would soon be exactly overhead, and when it was, its rays would
strike exactly through the huge diamond that crowned the Snake, and the
intolerable rays, thus concentrated as though by a mighty burning
glass, would fall full upon my eyes, torturing and searing me to the
semblance of what I had seen on the dead priest.
Screaming and writhing in an agony of apprehension, I lay helpless,
whilst the sun sped on, until its rim had almost reached the diamond.
But now came peal after peal of terrific thunder, and vivid lightning
that made even the sun look pale, and speeding across my field of
vision came also a huge black cloud thick and ominous, but to me a most
blessed sight a messenger of mercy a miracle! Swiftly it sped, but
would it be in time?
The sun had reached the diamond now, and shrink as I would I already
felt the roasting heat that beat upon the stone but a few inches from
my head. Surely it would reach me, my brain would crack . . . but now,
thank God! . . . the cloud had swept across, and for the moment I was
safe, at least from this terror.
And now, with the almost incessant roar of thunder came the rain a few
huge, stinging drops at first then a downpour such as I had never seen.
In incessant sheets it fell like a huge cataract, beating upon my
helpless face till I gasped for breath, as one half drowned; and soon
the roar of water falling upon water almost drowned the pealing
thunder. The shouts of joy that had hailed the first few drops were
soon changed to wild cries of alarm, and as still the deluge continued
as though the very flood-gates of heaven were opened, the screams of
the vast multitude joined the roar of water and the pealing of thunder
in one stupendous chorus. I could not see, but I could hear and realize
that an awful struggle was going on below me: there in that vast hollow
the unseen people would be trapped beyond hope, for into it the water
from the plains above would rush in one vast cataract. And still the
torrent beat down and the thunder pealed; and I, half mad with my
sufferings, yelled and shouted, in mockery of the screams of those who
would have immolated me, and who were now themselves perishing all
around me. At length the groans and screams of the dying multitude died
down to choking gasps, then even these ceased, but still the thunder
pealed, and the rain beat down upon my unprotected body till my
overwrought senses rebelled, and I sank into a swoon.
A voice the voice that I had heard in invocation came to me in my
disordered dreams calling me back. Its insistence troubled me, for I
was unwilling to return. But again and again it called, and I at length
came back reluctantly to reality.
"Fear not, thy life is thine own again," said the grave, vibrant
accents in my ear, and I opened my eyes to find myself still lying upon
the altar.
Gazing down upon me was a face that I shall never forget to my dying
day the face of a woman, whose skin of ivory whiteness accentuated the
unfathomable blackness of the most wonderful eyes I shall ever behold.
They seemed to pierce me through and through, and to search my very
soul, as I lay there and gazed back into them as a fascinated bird
gazes back into the eyes of the striking snake.
Power infinite there was in those commanding orbs, wisdom and knowledge
surpassing that of mere mankind infinite good or infinite evil I know
not which!
I shrank in mortal terror at their merciless scrutiny, but I could
neither close my eyes nor tear them away, until a hand was passed
across my brow, and the spell was broken.
Now a knife cut my bonds, and I was raised by a strong arm to a sitting
posture.
How is it possible to describe the horror of the appalling scene that
met my shrinking eyes, as for the first time since I had been a
prisoner I was able to look upon my surroundings.
The blood-red sun was setting in a stormy sky, from which in the
distance the lightning still flickered, close beside me stood the tall
form of the priestess, and below, on the lower tiers of the pyramid,
were grouped about twenty men priests I judged them to be all robed in
white garments, all white men, of fierce and sinister aspect.
But it was not upon these that my eyes rested, but upon the grim and
awful holocaust that stretched in all directions below and beyond.
For the pyramid stood as an island in a sea of dead men: from its base,
to the mighty walls that encircled the vast floor of the crater, it
stretched in an unbroken sheet unbroken, that is, except for the myriad
drowned bodies from which the rapidly receding flood was fast draining
away.
The glare from the crimson sunset turned it into a sea of blood, and
each moment the forms of the drowned multitude showed more and more
distinctly; clasping and clinging to each other in the awful
contortions of death, as they had struggled with each other in their
frantic fight against that awful cataclysm; heap upon heap, line after
line, thousands upon thousands of them a multitude a whole nation
overwhelmed and destroyed.
Not white men such as the priests, who alone had been saved upon the
pyramid, but brown men of Inyati's type, their bodies nude except for a
loincloth.
Stunned and dismayed at the fearful sight, I sat inert upon the altar,
and gazed upon the mighty hecatomb in utter forgetfulness of my own
awful position, till the priestess, who had awakened me, and who also
had stood in silent contemplation, turned and once more fixed her
glowing eyes upon me.
"Look well, O stranger, look well upon these thy dead," she said in a
clear, ringing voice; "upon these who would have sacrificed thee yet
who, dying, called upon thee, their bound sacrifice, to save them!
'Save us, Mighty One!' they supplicated, 'thou who art mightier than
the Snake save us!' . . . Poor fools they are dead all, all, are dead.
. . . And thou, thou helpless 'Mighty One'" she mocked, "art thou
content with this thy vengeance, or must we poor servants of the Snake
also die to appease thy wrath?"
The look and tone of fierce mockery brought back to me all the fear of
hideous torture I had felt before, and I begged that they should
mercifully kill me and have done.
"Nay," she replied, "fear not that shall not be I have told thee thy
life is safe. Well do I know that thou art but a man, and no god, such
as these poor fools thought thee at the last but the Snake hath spared
thee, and thy life is sacred. Free shalt thou go, free and with an
abundance of the bright stones these dead people deemed sacred and the
lust of which brought thee, O stranger, unasked and unwelcome to this
our land. Life shall be thine and thou shalt be guided back to the land
from whence thou earnest; but thou shalt eat first of the fruit of
forgetfulness, and never shalt thou find again the path by which thou
earnest hither, or that other by which thou shalt return."
The solemn tone and promise allayed my fears somewhat; at least my life
was to be spared; but this talk of not finding the path again did it
mean that they would blind me?
Even as the thought entered my mind the mysterious being who held me in
her power answered it as though I had spoken it aloud.
"Fear not, I say again," said she, "neither thine eyes, nor a hair of
thy head shall be injured. Rather do I grant thee a precious boon, such
as many crave for in vain the boon of forgetfulness . . . yet not of
all! Stand upon thy feet, O stranger, and look well upon this lake of
the dead, then turn and look upon me these things thou shalt not
forget."
Weak and shaken by my awful experience, I tottered as I tried to stand
upright, and but for her supporting hand I should have fallen. "Aye
thou art weak," said she again, "but that which I will give will bring
back the strength to thy palsied limbs. . . . Look well, I say, and
forget not this!"
Forget! How could I ever forget that awful scene the blood-red water,
the countless heaps of drowned men, the upturned faces of the pale
priests below me, their dark eyes fixed upon me with looks of hatred
and malevolence.
"Aye, they would torture and sacrifice thee," said the strange being
who dominated them, and who held my life in her hands, and who again
answered my unspoken thought, "but that may not be. . . . And now look
thou on me and forget not."
She stood proudly erect, her brow bound by a bronze snake the miniature
of the idol above, the diamond set in this strange coronet outdone in
splendor by the fires of her wondrous eyes. And now I saw her not as a
sphinx-like being of terror, but as a glorious woman, a creature to be
adored for her beauty alone, and the long stagnant blood coursed
through my veins as I gazed entranced, and for ever enthralled.
No thought of that woman who waited crossed my mind, nothing but mad
desire and adoration filled me for this creature of unearthly beauty;
and spirit, woman, devil, be she what she might, my one mad longing was
to gaze upon her, to worship her, to possess her for ever.
And as I gazed spellbound she spoke again.
"Nay, I see thou wilt never forget," she smiled gravely, "yet must thou
eat of the fruit that will bring forgetfulness of all other things."
She called to the priest in another tongue; and one came scowlingly,
bringing with him a small box of ebony. The priestess took something
from it, and again turned her piercing eyes upon my own, compelling,
commanding, dominating me, as she had done when I first opened my eyes.
I tried to speak to beg, to implore, that I might remain her slave, if
need be, but near her, but she had put a spell upon my tongue, and I
could not.
Slowly she held forth her hand, and in the palm I now saw a small
withered berry, black and shriveled, but in shape like the scarlet
berries I had eaten so often in the crater. "Eat and forget! . . . Eat
and forget!" the voice commanded; and now the eyes sought mine again
and fascinated and mastered me.
No! I would not eat. ... I would not go! and with all my strength I
opposed her will . . . this was poison surely ... I would not eat!
"I seek not thy life rather would I save it," came the warning, as I
struggled against the domination, "I have but to hold forth my hand to
these my servants, and they would tear thee limb from limb. See, then!"
A gesture, and the crowd of frowning priests sprang up the steps and
swarmed round me; their fierce, vulpine faces aglow with terrible joy,
their long talon-like nails outstretched to rend me fearful horrifying!
At a word, and just as they had almost reached me, the priestess stayed
them; but now their hot breath beat close upon me, and in deadly fear I
stretched out my hand and took the berry. "Eat eat, and be safe, no
harm shall come thee eat and forget eat and forget!" and with the
clarion accents ringing in my ears, and with those unfathomable eyes
gazing steadily into my own, I crushed the berry between my teeth and
swallowed it. A strange, acrid taste, similar but vastly stronger than
the berries I had eaten before . . . a rush of blood to my head, a
tingling through all my veins, and then a blackness surging up and
hiding all, even blotting out the star-like eyes before me, till all,
all was black.
An endless dream of wanderings in thick pathless forests, an endless
search for something lost: an eternity of vague formless dreams.
Searching searching, and finding nothing: an infinite sorrow for
something I could never again find.
Eyes gleaming at me from the dark forest; a myriad eyes, coming and
going in the vague shadows, and a voice calling; something I could not
understand; and through all, the sorrow for something precious, lost
beyond recall.