Stepping to the window, I found that the apartment in which we stood was
evidently situated in a tower of the palace--which I had heard was built
high on Mount Dala--for the great city, with its white, flat-roofed
houses and cupolas, and minarets of mosques, lay stretched beneath us.
At the massive gate, in the high frowning walls which surrounded the
extensive and wealthy capital of the Empire of Sokoto, the far-famed
_entrepot_ of Central Africa, soldiers, attired in bright uniforms of
blue and gold, swarmed like flies, while cannon bristled on the walls,
and everywhere spears and arms glittered in the sun. She pointed out
the Jakara, a wide, deep lake, the great Slave Market crowded with
buyers, sellers and human merchandise, the Palace of Ghaladima and the
Kofa Mazuger. The city was agog, for the hum of life rose from its
crowded streets and busy market-places, mingling now and then with the
ominous roll of the war-drums, the twanging of _ginkris_, the clashing
of cymbals, and the shouts of the eager, ever-watchful troops. By the
cloudless, milk-white sky I knew it was about noon, and the sun directly
overhead poured down mercilessly upon the immense sandy plain which
stretched away eastward and northward until it was lost in the misty
haze of the distant horizon. Date palms rose in small clusters near the
ornamental lake in the centre of the city; in the square spreading
_alleluba-trees_ cast their welcome shade, and beautiful _gotuias_
unfolded their large, featherlike leaves above slender and undivided
stems, but beyond the city walls there was not a tree, not a blade of
grass, not a living thing. Out there all was sun, sand and silence.
"Dost thou reside here always?" I asked, as together we gazed down upon
the great white city.
"Yes. Seldom are we in Sokoto itself, for of later years its prosperity
hath declined, and the palace is of meagre proportions; indeed, it is
now half ruined and almost deserted. The wealth and industry of the
empire is centred here in Kano, for our trade extendeth as far north as
Mourkouk, Ghat, and even Tripoli; to the west, not only to Timbuktu, but
even to the shores of the great sea; to the east, all over Bornu; and to
the south, among the Igbira, the Igbo, and among the pagans and ivory
hunters of the Congo."
"True," I said, gazing round upon the prosperous capital of one of the
most interesting empires in the world. "It is scarcely surprising that
my ambitious lord, the Khalifa, should desire to annex the land of the
Sultan 'Othman. Even our own cities of Omdurman or Khartoum are not of
such extent. How many persons inhabit this, thy palace?"
"In this, the Great Fada, nearly three thousand men and women reside.
In the harem alone are four hundred women and six hundred slaves and
eunuchs, while the Imperial bodyguard numbers nearly a thousand."
Glancing below, I saw the palace was enclosed by white walls as high and
strong as the outer fortifications. It was built within the great Kasba
or fortress, a veritable city within a city.
Turning, our eyes met, and pointing to the distant, sun-baked
wilderness, I exclaimed,--
"Away there, the vultures would already have stripped my bones hadst
thou not taken compassion upon me."
"Speak not again of that," she answered. "Thou wert the only man in
whose body the spark of life still burned. It was my duty to rescue
thee," she replied, rather evasively.
"Now that we understand and trust each other, now indeed, that we are
friends true and faithful, wilt thou not tell me why thou didst convey
me hither unto thine apartment?"
She hesitated, gazing away towards the misty line where sky and desert
joined, until suddenly she turned, and looking boldly into my face with
her clear, trusting eyes, answered,--
"It was in consequence of something that was revealed."
"By whom?"
"By thee."
"What revelation have I made?" I asked, sorely puzzled.
She held her breath, her fingers twitched with nervous excitement, and
the colour left her cheeks. She seemed striving to preserve some
strange secret, yet, at the same time, half inclined to render me the
explanation I sought.
"The astounding truth became unveiled unconsciously," she said.
"My mind faileth to follow the meanderings of thy words," I said. "What
truth?"
"Behold!" she cried, and hitching the slim fingers of both her hands in
the bodice of cream flimsy silk she wore beneath her zouave, she tore it
asunder disclosing, not without a blush of modesty, her white chest.
"Behold!" she cried, hoarsely. "What dost thou recognise?"
With both her hands she held the torn garment apart, and, as she did so,
my eyes became riveted in abject amazement. Bending, I examined it
closely, assuring myself that I was not dreaming.
"Hast thou never seen its counterpart?" she asked, panting breathlessly.
"Yea," I answered, with bated breath. "Of a verity the coincidence
astoundeth me."
The sight caused me to marvel greatly; I was bewildered, for it conjured
up a thought that was horrible. In the exact centre of her delicate
chest, immediately above her heaving bosom, was a strange, dark red mark
of curious shape, deeply branded into the white flesh, as if at some
time or other it had been seared by a red-hot iron. The paleness of the
flesh and the firm contour of her bosom rendered the indelible mark the
more hideous, but its position and its shape dumbfounded me. The
strange blemish constituted an inexplicable mystery.
It was unaccountable, incredible. I stood agape, staring at it with
wide-open, wondering eyes, convinced that its discovery was precursory
of revelations startling and undreamed of.
The mark, about the length of the little finger, and perfectly defined,
was shaped to represent two serpents with heads facing each other, their
writhing bodies intertwined in double curves.
In itself this mystic brand was hideous enough, but to me it had a
significance deeper and more amazing, for in the centre of my own chest
I bore a mark exactly identical in every detail!
For years; nay, ever since I had known myself, the red scar, not so
noticeable upon my brown, sun-tanned skin as upon Azala's pale, delicate
breast, had been one of the mysteries of my life. Vividly I remembered
how, in my early youth, in far El-Manaa I had sought an explanation of
my parents, but they would never vouchsafe any satisfactory reply. On
what occasion, or for what purpose the mysterious brand had been placed
upon me I knew not. Vaguely I believed that it had been impressed as a
means of identification at my birth, and until this moment had been
fully convinced that I alone bore the strangely-shaped device. Judge,
then, my abject astonishment to find a similar mark, evidently impressed
by the identical seal, upon the breast of the woman who had thus exerted
her ingenuity to save my life--the woman whose grace and marvellous
beauty had captivated me, the woman who had admitted that she
reciprocated my affection.
In that brief moment I remembered well the strange, ambiguous reply that
my mother had given me when, as a lad, my natural curiosity had been
aroused,--
"Sufficient for thee to know that the Mark of the Asps is upon thee, O
my son. Seek not to discover its significance until thou meetest with
its exact counterpart. Then strive night and day to learn the truth,
for if thou canst elucidate the mystery, thine ears will listen to
strange things, and thine eyes will behold wondrous and undreamed-of
marvels."
Since then, twenty long years had elapsed, and I had wandered far and
near, in England, in France, in Algeria and across the Great Desert.
Both my parents had died with the strange secret still locked in their
hearts, for by no amount of ingenious questioning could I succeed in
unloosing their tongues. Now, however, my mother's prophetic utterance
and counsel, spoken in our white house on the green hill-side, came back
vividly to my memory, and I gazed in silence at Azala full of
apprehensive thoughts.
My mother had more than once assured me that she knew not its meaning,
and that, although she had sought explanation of my father, he had
refused to reveal to her more than she had told me, and he, too, had
died with the secret resolutely preserved. But the exact counterpart of
the brand burnt into my own flesh was now before me. What could be the
significance of the two asps? how, indeed, came the daughter of the
great Sultan 'Othman, whom none dare approach, to be disfigured the same
as myself, a free-booter of the Khalifa, a Dervish and an outcast?
"How earnest thou to bear the brand of the serpents?" I asked, when
again I found speech. "An identical mark is upon my own breast also."
But ere she could answer my inquiry a stealthy movement behind startled
us, and as I turned, two gigantic black eunuchs sprang upon me, while
two others appeared from behind the rose silk hangings.
"Behold!" cried a man, whom I knew by his gorgeous dress to be the Aga
of the Eunuchs. "It is a man, not a woman! The slave hath not lied.
Seize him!"
"May Allah show thee mercy!" gasped Azala, pale and trembling, with
clasped hands. "We are betrayed!"
I struggled and fought with all the strength I possessed, but my brutal
captors bore me down, and in their sinewy hands I was in a moment
helpless as a babe. Then I knew that Azala was, alas! lost to me.
Romance, hope, passion, one by one, dropped, emberlike, into the ashes.