CHAPTER II. THE MESSENGERS
CHAPTER III. UMSLOPOGAAS OF THE AXE
CHAPTER IV. THE LION AND THE AXE
CHAPTER V. INEZ
CHAPTER VI. THE SEA-COW HUNT
CHAPTER VII. THE OATH
CHAPTER VIII. PURSUIT
CHAPTER IX. THE SWAMP
CHAPTER X. THE ATTACK
CHAPTER XI. THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN WALL
CHAPTER XII. THE WHITE WITCH
CHAPTER XIII. ALLAN HEARS A STRANGE TALE
CHAPTER XIV. ALLAN MISSES OPPORTUNITY
CHAPTER XV. ROBERTSON IS LOST
CHAPTER XVI. ALLAN’S VISION
CHAPTER XVII. THE MIDNIGHT BATTLE
CHAPTER XVIII. THE SLAYING OF REZU
CHAPTER XIX. THE SPELL
CHAPTER XX. THE GATE OF DEATH
CHAPTER XXI. THE LESSON
CHAPTER XXII. AYESHA’S FAREWELL
CHAPTER XXIII. WHAT UMSLOPOGAAS SAW
CHAPTER XXIV. UMSLOPOGAAS WEARS THE GREAT MEDICINE
CHAPTER XXV. ALLAN DELIVERS THE MESSAGE
NOTE BY THE LATE MR. ALLAN QUATERMAIN
My friend, into whose hands I hope that all these manuscripts of mine
will pass one day, of this one I have something to say to you.
A long while ago I jotted down in it the history of the events that it
details with more or less completeness. This I did for my own
satisfaction. You will have noted how memory fails us as we advance in
years; we recollect, with an almost painful exactitude, what we
experienced and saw in our youth, but the happenings of our middle life
slip away from us or become blurred, like a stretch of low-lying
landscape overflowed by grey and nebulous mist. Far off the sun still
seems to shine upon the plains and hills of adolescence and early
manhood, as yet it shines about us in the fleeting hours of our age,
that ground on which we stand to-day, but the valley between is filled
with fog. Yes, even its prominences, which symbolise the more startling
events of that past, often are lost in this confusing fog.
It was an appreciation of these truths which led me to set down the
following details (though of course much is omitted) of my brief
intercourse with the strange and splendid creature whom I knew under
the names of _Ayesha_, or _Híya_, or _She-who-commands_; not indeed
with any view to their publication, but before I forgot them that, if I
wished to do so, I might re-peruse them in the evening of old age to
which I hope to attain.
Indeed, at the time the last thing I intended was that they should be
given to the world even after my own death, because they, or many of
them, are so unusual that I feared lest they should cause smiles and in
a way cast a slur upon my memory and truthfulness. Also, as you will
read, as to this matter I made a promise and I have always tried to
keep my promises and to guard the secrets of others. For these reasons
I proposed, in case I neglected or forgot to destroy them myself, to
leave a direction that this should be done by my executors. Further, I
have been careful to make no allusion _whatever_ to them either in
casual conversation or in anything else that I may have written, my
desire being that this page of my life should be kept quite private,
something known only to myself. Therefore, too, I never so much as
hinted of them to anyone, not even to yourself to whom I have told so
much.
Well, I recorded the main facts concerning this expedition and its
issues, simply and with as much exactness as I could, and laid them
aside. I do not say that I never thought of them again, since amongst
them were some which, together with the problems they suggested, proved
to be of an unforgettable nature.
Also, whenever any of Ayesha’s sayings or stories which are not
preserved in these pages came back to me, as has happened from time to
time, I jotted them down and put them away with this manuscript. Thus
among these notes you will find a history of the city of Kôr as she
told it to me, which I have omitted here. Still, many of these
remarkable events did more or less fade from my mind, as the image does
from an unfixed photograph, till only their outlines remained, faint if
distinguishable.
To tell the truth, I was rather ashamed of the whole story in which I
cut so poor a figure. On reflection it was obvious to me, although
honesty had compelled me to set out all that is essential exactly as it
occurred, adding nothing and taking nothing away, that I had been the
victim of very gross deceit. This strange woman, whom I had met in the
ruins of a place called Kôr, without any doubt had thrown a glamour
over my senses and at the moment almost caused me to believe much that
is quite unbelievable.
For instance, she had told me ridiculous stories as to interviews
between herself and certain heathen goddesses, though it is true that,
almost with her next breath, these she qualified or contradicted. Also,
she had suggested that her life had been prolonged far beyond our
mortal span, for hundreds and hundreds of years, indeed; which, as
Euclid says, is absurd, and had pretended to supernatural powers, which
is still more absurd. Moreover, by a clever use of some hypnotic or
mesmeric power, she had feigned to transport me to some place beyond
the earth and in the Halls of Hades to show me what is veiled from the
eyes of man, and not only me, but the savage warrior Umhlopekazi,
commonly called Umslopogaas of the Axe, who, with Hans, a Hottentot,
was my companion upon that adventure. There were like things equally
incredible, such as her appearance, when all seemed lost, in the battle
with the troll-like Rezu. To omit these, the sum of it was that I had
been shamefully duped, and if anyone finds himself in that position, as
most people have at one time or another in their lives, Wisdom suggests
that he had better keep the circumstances to himself.
Well, so the matter stood, or rather lay in the recesses of my mind—and
in the cupboard where I hide my papers—when one evening someone, as a
matter of fact it was Captain Good, an individual of romantic
tendencies who is fond, sometimes I think too fond, of fiction, brought
a book to this house which he insisted over and over again really I
must peruse.
Ascertaining that it was a novel I declined, for to tell the truth I am
not fond of romance in any shape, being a person who has found the hard
facts of life of sufficient interest as they stand.
Reading I admit I like, but in this matter, as in everything else, my
range is limited. I study the Bible, especially the Old Testament, both
because of its sacred lessons and of the majesty of the language of its
inspired translators; whereof that of Ayesha, which I render so poorly
from her flowing and melodious Arabic, reminded me. For poetry I turn
to Shakespeare, and, at the other end of the scale, to the Ingoldsby
Legends, many of which I know almost by heart, while for current
affairs I content myself with the newspapers.
For the rest I peruse anything to do with ancient Egypt that I happen
to come across, because this land and its history have a queer
fascination for me, that perhaps has its roots in occurrences or dreams
of which this is not the place to speak. Lastly now and again I read
one of the Latin or Greek authors in a translation, since I regret to
say that my lack of education does not enable me to do so in the
original. But for modern fiction I have no taste, although from time to
time I sample it in a railway train and occasionally am amused by such
excursions into the poetic and unreal.
So it came about that the more Good bothered me to read this particular
romance, the more I determined that I would do nothing of the sort.
Being a persistent person, however, when he went away about ten o’clock
at night, he deposited it by my side, under my nose indeed, so that it
might not be overlooked. Thus it came about that I could not help
seeing some Egyptian hieroglyphics in an oval on the cover, also the
title, and underneath it your own name, my friend, all of which excited
my curiosity, especially the title, which was brief and enigmatic,
consisting indeed of one word, “_She_.”
I took up the work and on opening it the first thing my eye fell upon
was a picture of a veiled woman, the sight of which made my heart stand
still, so painfully did it remind me of a certain veiled woman whom
once it had been my fortune to meet. Glancing from it to the printed
page one word seemed to leap at me. It was _Kôr_! Now of veiled women
there are plenty in the world, but were there also two Kôrs?
Then I turned to the beginning and began to read. This happened in the
autumn when the sun does not rise till about six, but it was broad
daylight before I ceased from reading, or rather rushing through that
book.
Oh! what was I to make of it? For here in its pages (to say nothing of
old Billali, who, by the way lied, probably to order, when he told Mr.
Holly that no white man had visited his country for many generations,
and those gloomy, man-eating Amahagger scoundrels) once again I found
myself face to face with _She-who-commands_, now rendered as
_She-who-must-be-obeyed_, which means much the same thing—in her case
at least; yes, with Ayesha the lovely, the mystic, the changeful and
the imperious.
Moreover the history filled up many gaps in my own limited experiences
of that enigmatical being who was half divine (though, I think, rather
wicked or at any rate unmoral in her way) and yet all woman. It is true
that it showed her in lights very different from and higher than those
in which she had presented herself to me. Yet the substratum of her
character was the same, or rather of her characters, for of these she
seemed to have several in a single body, being, as she said of herself
to me, “not One but Many and not Here but Everywhere.”
Further, I found the story of Kallikrates, which I had set down as a
mere falsehood invented for my bewilderment, expanded and explained. Or
rather not explained, since, perhaps that she might deceive, to me she
had spoken of this murdered Kallikrates without enthusiasm, as a
handsome person to whom, because of an indiscretion of her youth, she
was bound by destiny and whose return—somewhat to her sorrow—she must
wait. At least she did so at first, though in the end when she bared
her heart at the moment of our farewell, she vowed she loved him only
and was “appointed” to him “by a divine decree.”
Also I found other things of which I knew nothing, such as the Fire of
Life with its fatal gift of indefinite existence, although I remember
that like the giant Rezu whom Umslopogaas defeated, she did talk of a
“Cup of Life” of which she had drunk, that might have been offered to
my lips, had I been politic, bowed the knee and shown more faith in her
and her supernatural pretensions.
Lastly I saw the story of her end, and as I read it I wept, yes, I
confess I wept, although I feel sure that she will return again. Now I
understood why she had quailed and even seemed to shrivel when, in my
last interview with her, stung beyond endurance by her witcheries and
sarcasms, I had suggested that even for her with all her powers, Fate
might reserve one of its shrewdest blows. Some prescience had told her
that if the words seemed random, Truth spoke through my lips, although,
and this was the worst of it, she did not know what weapon would deal
the stroke or when and where it was doomed to fall.
I was amazed, I was overcome, but as I closed that book I made up my
mind, first that I would continue to preserve absolute silence as to
Ayesha and my dealings with her, as, during my life, I was bound by
oath to do, and secondly that I would _not_ cause my manuscript to be
destroyed. I did not feel that I had any right to do so in view of what
already had been published to the world. There let it lie to appear one
day, or not to appear, as might be fated. Meanwhile my lips were
sealed. I would give Good back his book without comment and—buy another
copy!
One more word. It is clear that I did not touch more than the fringe of
the real Ayesha. In a thousand ways she bewitched and deceived me so
that I never plumbed her nature’s depths. Perhaps this was my own fault
because from the first I shewed a lack of faith in her and she wished
to pay me back in her own fashion, or perhaps she had other private
reasons for her secrecy. Certainly the character she discovered to me
differed in many ways from that which she revealed to Mr. Holly and to
Leo Vincey, or Kallikrates, whom, it seems, once she slew in her
jealousy and rage.
She told me as much as she thought it fit that I should know, and no
more!
Allan Quatermain.
The Grange, Yorkshire.
SHE AND ALLAN
CHAPTER I.
THE TALISMAN
I believe it was the old Egyptians, a very wise people, probably indeed
much wiser than we know, for in the leisure of their ample centuries
they had time to think out things, who declared that each individual
personality is made up of six or seven different elements, although the
Bible only allows us three, namely, body, soul, and spirit. The body
that the man or woman wore, if I understand their theory aright which
perhaps I, an ignorant person, do not, was but a kind of sack or
fleshly covering containing these different principles. Or mayhap it
did not contain them all, but was simply a house as it were, in which
they lived from time to time and seldom all together, although one or
more of them was present continually, as though to keep the place
warmed and aired.
This is but a casual illustrative suggestion, for what right have I,
Allan Quatermain, out of my little reading and probably erroneous
deductions, to form any judgment as to the theories of the old
Egyptians? Still these, as I understand them, suffice to furnish me
with the text that man is not one, but many, in which connection it may
be remembered that often in Scripture he is spoken of as being the home
of many demons, seven, I think. Also, to come to another far-off
example, the Zulus talk of their witch-doctors as being inhabited by “a
multitude of spirits.”
Anyhow of one thing I am quite sure, we are not always the same.
Different personalities actuate us at different times. In one hour
passion of this sort or the other is our lord; in another we are reason
itself. In one hour we follow the basest appetites; in another we hate
them and the spirit arising through our mortal murk shines within or
above us like a star. In one hour our desire is to kill and spare not;
in another we are filled with the holiest compassion even towards an
insect or a snake, and are ready to forgive like a god. Everything
rules us in turn, to such an extent indeed, that sometimes one begins
to wonder whether we really rule anything.
Now the reason of all this homily is that I, Allan, the most practical
and unimaginative of persons, just a homely, half-educated hunter and
trader who chances to have seen a good deal of the particular little
world in which his lot was cast, at one period of my life became the
victim of spiritual longings.
I am a man who has suffered great bereavements in my time such as have
seared my soul, since, perhaps because of my rather primitive and
simple nature, my affections are very strong. By day or night I can
never forget those whom I have loved and whom I believe to have loved
me.
For you know, in our vanity some of us are apt to hold that certain
people with whom we have been intimate upon the earth, really did care
for us and, in our still greater vanity—or should it be called
madness?—to imagine that they still care for us after they have left
the earth and entered on some new state of society and surroundings
which, if they exist, inferentially are much more congenial than any
they can have experienced here. At times, however, cold doubts strike
us as to this matter, of which we long to know the truth. Also behind
looms a still blacker doubt, namely whether they live at all.
For some years of my lonely existence these problems haunted me day by
day, till at length I desired above everything on earth to lay them at
rest in one way or another. Once, at Durban, I met a man who was a
spiritualist to whom I confided a little of my perplexities. He laughed
at me and said that they could be settled with the greatest ease. All I
had to do was to visit a certain local medium who for a fee of one
guinea would tell me everything I wanted to know. Although I rather
grudged the guinea, being more than usually hard up at the time, I
called upon this person, but over the results of that visit, or rather
the lack of them, I draw a veil.
My queer and perhaps unwholesome longing, however, remained with me and
would not be abated. I consulted a clergyman of my acquaintance, a good
and spiritually-minded man, but he could only shrug his shoulders and
refer me to the Bible, saying, quite rightly I doubt not, that with
what it reveals I ought to be contented. Then I read certain mystical
books which were recommended to me. These were full of fine words,
undiscoverable in a pocket dictionary, but really took me no forwarder,
since in them I found nothing that I could not have invented myself,
although while I was actually studying them, they seemed to convince
me. I even tackled Swedenborg, or rather samples of him, for he is very
copious, but without satisfactory results. [Ha!—JB]
Then I gave up the business.
Some months later I was in Zululand and being near the Black Kloof
where he dwelt, I paid a visit to my acquaintance of whom I have
written elsewhere, the wonderful and ancient dwarf, Zikali, known as
“The-Thing-that-should-never-have-been-born,” also more universally
among the Zulus as “Opener-of-Roads.” When we had talked of many things
connected with the state of Zululand and its politics, I rose to leave
for my waggon, since I never cared for sleeping in the Black Kloof if
it could be avoided.
“Is there nothing else that you want to ask me, Macumazahn?” asked the
old dwarf, tossing back his long hair and looking at—I had almost
written through—me.
I shook my head.
“That is strange, Macumazahn, for I seem to see something written on
your mind—something to do with spirits.”
Then I remembered all the problems that had been troubling me, although
in truth I had never thought of propounding them to Zikali.
“Ah! it comes back, does it?” he exclaimed, reading my thought. “Out
with it, then, Macumazahn, while I am in a mood to answer, and before I
grow tired, for you are an old friend of mine and will so remain till
the end, many years hence, and if I can serve you, I will.”
I filled my pipe and sat down again upon the stool of carved red-wood
which had been brought for me.
“You are named ‘Opener-of-Roads,’ are you not, Zikali?” I said.
“Yes, the Zulus have always called me that, since before the days of
Chaka. But what of names, which often enough mean nothing at all?”
“Only that _I_ want to open a road, Zikali, that which runs across the
River of Death.”
“Oho!” he laughed, “it is very easy,” and snatching up a little assegai
that lay beside him, he proffered it to me, adding, “Be brave now and
fall on that. Then before I have counted sixty the road will be wide
open, but whether you will see anything on it I cannot tell you.”
Again I shook my head and answered,
“It is against our law. Also while I still live I desire to know
whether I shall meet certain others on that road after my time has come
to cross the River. Perhaps you who deal with spirits, can prove the
matter to me, which no one else seems able to do.”
“Oho!” laughed Zikali again. “What do my ears hear? Am I, the poor Zulu
cheat, as you will remember once you called me, Macumazahn, asked to
show that which is hidden from all the wisdom of the great White
People?”
“The question is,” I answered with irritation, “not what you are asked
to do, but what you can do.”
“That I do not know yet, Macumazahn. Whose spirits do you desire to
see? If that of a woman called Mameena is one of them, I think that
perhaps I whom she loved——“[1]
[1] For the history of Mameena see the book called “Child of
Storm.”—Editor.
“She is _not_ one of them, Zikali. Moreover, if she loved you, you paid
back her love with death.”
“Which perhaps was the kindest thing I could do, Macumazahn, for
reasons that you may be able to guess, and others with which I will not
trouble you. But if not hers, whose? Let me look, let me look! Why,
there seems to be two of them, head-wives, I mean, and I thought that
white men only took one wife. Also a multitude of others; their faces
float up in the water of your mind. An old man with grey hair, little
children, perhaps they were brothers and sisters, and some who may be
friends. Also very clear indeed that Mameena whom you do not wish to
see. Well, Macumazahn, this is unfortunate, since she is the only one
whom I can show you, or rather put you in the way of finding. Unless
indeed there are other Kaffir women——”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean, Macumazahn, that only black feet travel on the road which I
can open; over those in which ran white blood I have no power.”
“Then it is finished,” I said, rising again and taking a step or two
towards the gate.
“Come back and sit down, Macumazahn. I did not say so. Am I the only
ruler of magic in Africa, which I am told is a big country?”
I came back and sat down, for my curiosity, a great failing with me,
was excited.
“Thank you, Zikali,” I said, “but I will have no dealings with more of
your witch-doctors.”
“No, no, because you are afraid of them; quite without reason,
Macumazahn, seeing that they are all cheats except myself. I am the
last child of wisdom, the rest are stuffed with lies, as Chaka found
out when he killed every one of them whom he could catch. But perhaps
there might be a white doctor who would have rule over white spirits.”
“If you mean missionaries——” I began hastily.
“No, Macumazahn, I do not mean your praying men who are cast in one
mould and measured with one rule, and say what they are taught to say,
not thinking for themselves.”
“Some of them think, Zikali.”
“Yes, and then the others fall on them with big sticks. The real priest
is he to whom the Spirit comes, not he who feeds upon its wrappings,
and speaks through a mask carved by his father’s fathers. I am a priest
like that, which is why all my fellowship have hated me.”
“If so, you have paid back their hate, Zikali, but cease to cast round
the lion, like a timid hound, and tell me what you mean. Of whom do you
speak?”
“That is the trouble, Macumazahn. I do not know. This lion, or rather
lioness, lies hid in the caves of a very distant mountain and I have
never seen her—in the flesh.”
“Then how can you talk of what you have never seen?”
“In the same way, Macumazahn, that your priests talk of what they have
never seen, because they, or a few of them, have knowledge of it. I
will tell you a secret. All seers who live at the same time, if they
are great, commune with each other because they are akin and their
spirits meet in sleep or dreams. Therefore I know of a mistress of our
craft, a very lioness among jackals, who for thousands of years has
lain sleeping in the northern caves and, humble though I am, she knows
of me.”
“Quite so,” I said, yawning, “but perhaps, Zikali, you will come to the
point of the spear. What of her? How is she named, and if she exists
will she help me?”
“I will answer your question backwards, Macumazahn. I think that she
will help you if you help her, in what way I do not know, because
although witch-doctors sometimes work without pay, as I am doing now,
Macumazahn, witch-doctoresses never do. As for her name, the only one
that she has among our company is ‘Queen,’ because she is the first of
all of them and the most beauteous among women. For the rest I can tell
you nothing, except that she has always been and I suppose, in this
shape or in that, will always be while the world lasts, because she has
found the secret of life unending.”
“You mean that she is immortal, Zikali,” I answered with a smile.
“I do not say that, Macumazahn, because my little mind cannot shape the
thought of immortality. But when I was a babe, which is far ago, she
had lived so long that scarce would she know the difference between
then and now, and already in her breast was all wisdom gathered. I know
it, because although, as I have said, we have never seen each other, at
times we walk together in our sleep, for thus she shares her
loneliness, and I think, though this may be but a dream, that last
night she told me to send you on to her to seek an answer to certain
questions which you would put to me to-day. Also to me she seemed to
desire that you should do her a service; I know not what service.”
Now I grew angry and asked,
“Why does it please you to fool me, Zikali, with such talk as this? If
there is any truth in it, show me where the woman called _Queen_ lives
and how I am to come to her.”
The old wizard took up the little assegai which he had offered to me
and with its blade raked out ashes from the fire that always burnt in
front of him. While he did so, he talked to me, as I thought in a
random fashion, perhaps to distract my attention, of a certain white
man whom he said I should meet upon my journey and of his affairs, also
of other matters, none of which interested me much at the time. These
ashes he patted down flat and then on them drew a map with the point of
his spear, making grooves for streams, certain marks for bush and
forest, wavy lines for water and swamps and little heaps for hills.
When he had finished it all he bade me come round the fire and study
the picture across which by an after-thought he drew a wandering furrow
with the edge of the assegai to represent a river, and gathered the
ashes in a lump at the northern end to signify a large mountain.
“Look at it well, Macumazahn,” he said, “and forget nothing, since if
you make this journey and forget, you die. Nay, no need to copy it in
that book of yours, for see, I will stamp it on your mind.”
Then suddenly he gathered up the warm ashes in a double handful and
threw them into my face, muttering something as he did so and adding
aloud,
“There, now you will remember.”
“Certainly I shall,” I answered, coughing, “and I beg that you will not
play such a joke upon me again.”
As a matter of fact, whatever may have been the reason, I never forgot
any detail of that extremely intricate map.
“That big river must be the Zambesi,” I stuttered, “and even then the
mountain of your Queen, if it be her mountain, is far away, and how can
I come there alone?”
“I don’t know, Macumazahn, though perhaps you might do so in company.
At least I believe that in the old days people used to travel to the
place, since I have heard a great city stood there once which was the
heart of a mighty empire.”
Now I pricked up my ears, for though I believed nothing of Zikali’s
story of a wonderful Queen, I was always intensely interested in past
civilisations and their relics. Also I knew that the old wizard’s
knowledge was extensive and peculiar, however he came by it, and I did
not think that he would lie to me in this matter. Indeed to tell the
truth, then and there I made up my mind that if it were in any way
possible, I would attempt this journey.
“How did people travel to the city, Zikali?”
“By sea, I suppose, Macumazahn, but I think that you will be wise not
to try that road, since I believe that on the sea side the marshes are
now impassable and you will be safer on your feet.”
“You want me to go on this adventure, Zikali. Why? I know you never do
anything without motive.”
“Oho! Macumazahn, you are clever and see deeper into the trunk of a
tree than most. Yes, I want you to go for three reasons. First, that
you may satisfy your soul on certain matters and I would help you to do
so. Secondly, because I want to satisfy mine, and thirdly, because I
know that you will come back safe to be a prop to me in things that
will happen in days unborn. Otherwise I would have told you nothing of
this story, since it is necessary to me that you should remain living
beneath the sun.”
“Have done, Zikali. What is it that you desire?”
“Oh! a great deal that I shall get, but chiefly two things, so with the
rest I will not trouble you. First I desire to know whether these
dreams of mine of a wonderful white witch-doctoress, or witch, and of
my converse with her are indeed more than dreams. Next I would learn
whether certain plots of mine at which I have worked for years, will
succeed.”
“What plots, Zikali, and how can my taking a distant journey tell you
anything about them?”
“You know them well enough, Macumazahn; they have to do with the
overthrow of a Royal House that has worked me bitter wrong. As to how
your journey can help me, why, thus. You shall promise to me to ask of
this Queen whether Zikali, Opener-of-Roads, shall triumph or be
overthrown in that on which he has set his heart.”
“As you seem to know this witch so well, why do you not ask her
yourself, Zikali?”
“To ask is one thing, Macumazahn. To get an answer is another. I have
asked in the watches of the night, and the reply was, ‘Come hither and
perchance I will tell you.’ ‘Queen,’ I said, ‘how can I come save in
the spirit, who am an ancient and a crippled dwarf scarcely able to
stand upon my feet?’
“‘Then send a messenger, Wizard, and be sure that he is white, for of
black savages I have seen more than enough. Let him bear a token also
that he comes from you and tell me of it in your sleep. Moreover let
that token be something of power which will protect him on the
journey.’
“Such is the answer that comes to me in my dreams, Macumazahn.”
“Well, what token will you give me, Zikali?”
He groped about in his robe and produced a piece of ivory of the size
of a large chessman, that had a hole in it, through which ran a plaited
cord of the stiff hairs from an elephant’s tail. On this article, which
was of a rusty brown colour, he breathed, then having whispered to it
for a while, handed it to me.
I took the talisman, for such I guessed it to be, idly enough, held it
to the light to examine it, and started back so violently that almost I
let it fall. I do not quite know why I started, but I think it was
because some influence seemed to leap from it to me. Zikali started
also and cried out,
“Have a care, Macumazahn. Am I young that I can bear being dashed to
the ground?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, still staring at the thing which I
perceived to be a most wonderfully fashioned likeness of the old dwarf
himself as he appeared before me crouched upon the ground. There were
the deepset eyes, the great head, the toad-like shape, the long hair,
all.
“It is a clever carving, is it not, Macumazahn? I am skilled in that
art, you know, and therefore can judge of carving.”
“Yes, I know,” I answered, bethinking me of another statuette of his
which he had given to me on the morrow of the death of her from whom it
was modelled. “But what of the thing?”
“Macumazahn, it has come down to me through the ages. As you may have
heard, all great doctors when they die pass on their wisdom and
something of their knowledge to another doctor of spirits who is still
living on the earth, that nothing may be lost, or as little as
possible. Also I have learned that to such likenesses as these may be
given the strength of him or her from whom they were shaped.”
Now I bethought me of the old Egyptians and their _Ka_ statues of which
I had read, and that these statues, magically charmed and set in the
tombs of the departed, were supposed to be inhabited everlastingly by
the Doubles of the dead endued with more power even than ever these
possessed in life. But of this I said nothing to Zikali, thinking that
it would take too much explanation, though I wondered very much how he
had come by the same idea.
“When that ivory is hung over your heart, Macumazahn, where you must
always wear it, learn that with it goes the strength of Zikali; the
thought that would have been his thought and the wisdom that is his
wisdom, will be your companions, as much as though he walked at your
side and could instruct you in every peril. Moreover north and south
and east and west this image is known to men who, when they see it,
will bow down and obey, opening a road to him who wears the medicine of
the Opener-of-Roads.”
“Indeed,” I said, smiling, “and what is this colour on the ivory?”
“I forget, Macumazahn, who have had it a great number of years, ever
since it descended to me from a forefather of mine, who was fashioned
in the same mould as I am. It looks like blood, does it not? It is a
pity that Mameena is not still alive, since she whose memory was so
excellent might have been able to tell you,” and as he spoke, with a
motion that was at once sure and swift, he threw the loop of elephant
hair over my head.
Hastily I changed the subject, feeling that after his wont this old
wizard, the most terrible man whom ever I knew, who had been so much
concerned with the tragic death of Mameena, was stabbing at me in some
hidden fashion.
“You tell me to go on this journey,” I said, “and not alone. Yet for
companion you give me only an ugly piece of ivory shaped as no man ever
was,” here I got one back at Zikali, “and from the look of it, steeped
in blood, which ivory, if I had my way, I would throw into the camp
fire. Who, then, am I to take with me?”
“Don’t do that, Macumazahn—I mean throw the ivory into the fire—since I
have no wish to burn before my time, and if you do, you who have worn
it might burn with me. At least certainly you would die with the magic
thing and go to acquire knowledge more quickly than you desire. No, no,
and do not try to take it off your neck, or rather try if you will.”
I did try, but something seemed to prevent me from accomplishing my
purpose of giving the carving back to Zikali as I wished to do. First
my pipe got in the way of my hand, then the elephant hairs caught in
the collar of my coat; then a pang of rheumatism to which I was
accustomed from an old lion-bite, developed of a sudden in my arm, and
lastly I grew tired of bothering about the thing.
Zikali, who had been watching my movements, burst out into one of his
terrible laughs that seemed to fill the whole kloof and to re-echo from
its rocky walls. It died away and he went on, without further reference
to the talisman or image.
“You asked whom you were to take with you, Macumazahn. Well, as to this
I must make inquiry of those who know. Man, my medicines!”
From the shadows in the hut behind darted out a tall figure carrying a
great spear in one hand and in the other a catskin bag which with a
salute he laid down at the feet of his master. This salute, by the way,
was that of a Zulu word which means “Lord” or “Home” of Ghosts.
Zikali groped in the bag and produced from it certain knuckle-bones.
“A common method,” he muttered, “such as every vulgar wizard uses, but
one that is quick and, as the matter concerned is small, will serve my
turn. Let us see now, whom you shall take with you, Macumazahn.”
Then he breathed upon the bones, shook them up in his thin hands and
with a quick turn of the wrist, threw them into the air. After this he
studied them carefully, where they lay among the ashes which he had
raked out of the fire, those that he had used for the making of his
map.
“Do you know a man named Umslopogaas, Macumazahn, the chief of a tribe
that is called The People of the Axe, whose titles of praise are
Bulalio or the Slaughterer, and Woodpecker, the latter from the way he
handles his ancient axe? He is a savage fellow, but one of high blood
and higher courage, a great captain in his way, though he will never
come to anything, save a glorious death—in your company, I think,
Macumazahn.” (Here he studied the bones again for a while.) “Yes, I am
sure, in your company, though not upon this journey.”
“I have heard of him,” I answered cautiously. “It is said in the land
that he is a son of Chaka, the great king of the Zulus.”
“Is it, Macumazahn? And is it said also that he was the slayer of
Chaka’s brother, Dingaan, also the lover of the fairest woman that the
Zulus have ever seen, who was called Nada the Lily? Unless indeed a
certain Mameena, who, I seem to remember, was a friend of yours, may
have been even more beautiful?”
“I know nothing of Nada the Lily,” I answered.
“No, no, Mameena, ‘the Waiting Wind,’ has blown over her fame, so why
should you know of one who has been dead a long while? Why also,
Macumazahn, do you always bring women into every business? I begin to
believe that although you are so strict in a white man’s fashion, you
must be too fond of them, a weakness which makes for ruin to any man.
Well, now, I think that this wolf-man, this axe-man, this warrior,
Umslopogaas should be a good fellow to you on your journey to visit the
white witch, Queen—another woman by the way, Macumazahn, and therefore
one of whom you should be careful. Oh! yes, he will come with
you—because of a man called Lousta and a woman named Monazi, a wife of
his who hates him and does—not hate Lousta. I am almost sure that he
will come with you, so do not stop to ask questions about him.”
“Is there anyone else?” I inquired.
Zikali glanced at the bones again, poking them about in the ashes with
his toe, then replied with a yawn,
“You seem to have a little yellow man in your service, a clever snake
who knows how to creep through grass, and when to strike and when to
lie hidden. I should take him too, if I were you.”
“You know well that I have such a man, Zikali, a Hottentot named Hans,
clever in his way but drunken, very faithful too, since he loved my
father before me. He is cooking my supper in the waggon now. Are there
to be any others?”
“No, I think you three will be enough, with a guard of soldiers from
the People of the Axe, for you will meet with fighting and a ghost or
two. Umslopogaas has always one at his elbow named Nada, and perhaps
you have several. For instance, there was a certain Mameena whom I
always seem to feel about me when you are near, Macumazahn.
“Why, the wind is rising again, which is odd on so still an evening.
Listen to how it wails, yes, and stirs your hair, though mine hangs
straight enough. But why do I talk of ghosts, seeing that you travel to
seek other ghosts, white ghosts, beyond my ken, who can only deal with
those who were black?
“Good-night, Macumazahn, good-night. When you return from visiting the
white Queen, that Great One beneath whose feet I, Zikali, who am also
great in my way, am but a grain of dust, come and tell me her answer to
my question.
“Meanwhile, be careful always to wear that pretty little image which I
have given you, as a young lover sometimes wears a lock of hair cut
from the head of some fool-girl that he thinks is fond of him. It will
bring you safety and luck, Macumazahn, which, for the most part, is
more than the lock of hair does to the lover. Oh! it is a strange
world, full of jest to those who can see the strings that work it. I am
one of them, and perhaps, Macumazahn, you are another, or will be
before all is done—or begun.
“Good-night, and good fortune to you on your journeyings, and,
Macumazahn, although you are so fond of women, be careful not to fall
in love with that white Queen, because it would make others jealous; I
mean some whom you have lost sight of for a while, also I think that
being under a curse of her own, she is not one whom you can put into
your sack. _Oho! Oho-ho!_ Slave, bring me my blanket, it grows cold,
and my medicine also, that which protects me from the ghosts, who are
thick to-night. Macumazahn brings them, I think. _Oho-ho!_”
I turned to depart but when I had gone a little way Zikali called me
back again and said, speaking very low,
“When you meet this Umslopogaas, as you will meet him, he who is called
the Woodpecker and the Slaughterer, say these words to him,
“‘A bat has been twittering round the hut of the Opener-of-Roads, and
to his ears it squeaked the name of a certain Lousta and the name of a
woman called Monazi. Also it twittered another greater name that may
not be uttered, that of an elephant who shakes the earth, and said that
this elephant sniffs the air with his trunk and grows angry, and
sharpens his tusks to dig a certain Woodpecker out of his hole in a
tree that grows near the Witch Mountain. Say, too, that the
Opener-of-Roads thinks that this Woodpecker would be wise to fly north
for a while in the company of one who watches by night, lest harm
should come to a bird that pecks at the feet of the great and chatters
of it in his nest.’”
Then Zikali waved his hand and I went, wondering into what plot I had
stumbled.