Part 32 (1/2)
The dread of her horrible fate had caused her to faint, and it was a long time ere we could bring her back to the knowledge of her surroundings.
Tenderly the Dagombas, who a few minutes before would have brutally murdered her, carried her into one of the small luxuriantly-furnished chambers of the harem, and at my request left me alone with her. Kona, though fierce as a wild beast in war, was tender-hearted as a child where undefended women were concerned, and would have remained, but as commander of the forces now engaged in sacking the palace many onerous duties devolved upon him. Therefore I was left alone with her.
Her eyes closed, her fair hair disarranged, her clothing torn and blood-stained, she lay upon a soft divan, pale and motionless as one dead. I chafed her tiny hands, and released her rich robe at the throat to give her air, wondering by what strange chain of circ.u.mstances she had come to be an inmate of the private apartments of our enemy Samory. At last, however, her breast heaved and fell slowly once or twice, and presently she opened her beautiful eyes, gazing up at me with a puzzled, half-frightened expression.
”Liola,” I exclaimed softly, in the language of Mo. ”Thou art with friends, have no further fear. The soldiers of thy lover Omar have wreaked a vengeance complete and terrible upon thy captor Samory.”
”But the savages!” she gasped. ”They will kill me as they ma.s.sacred all the women.”
”No, no, they will not,” I a.s.sured her, placing my arm tenderly beneath her handsome head. ”The savages are our Dagomba allies who, not knowing that thou wert a native of Mo, would have butchered thee like the rest.”
”And thou didst save me?” she cried. ”Yes, I remember, thou didst shoot dead the brute who would have cut off my foot to secure my diamond anklet. I owe my life to thee.”
”Ah! do not speak of that,” I cried. ”Calm thyself and rest a.s.sured of thy safety, for thou shalt return with us to the land of thy fathers.
Thou shalt, ere a moon has run its course, pillow thine head upon the shoulder of the man thou lovest, Omar, Naba of Mo.”
She blushed deeply at my words, and her small white hand still smeared with blood, gripped my wrist. Her heart seemed too full for words, and in this manner she silently thanked me for rescuing her from the awful fate to which she had so nearly been hurried.
Soon she recovered from the shock sufficiently to sit up and chat.
Together we listened to the roar of the excited mult.i.tude outside, and from the lattice window could see columns of dense black smoke rising from the city, where the fighting-men of Mo, in accordance with their instructions from Omar, having sacked the place, were now setting it on fire.
In answer to my eager questions as to her adventures after her seizure by the soldiers of the Great White Queen, she said:
”Yes. It is true they captured me, together with my girl slave, Wyona, and hurried me towards the palace. Wyona fought and bit like a tigress, and one of the men becoming infuriated, killed her. Just at that moment the attack was made upon us by the populace, and they, witnessing his action, tore him limb from limb. Then, in the fierce conflict that followed, I escaped from their clutches in the same manner as Omar and thyself. Knowing of the attack to be made upon the palace I fled for safety in the opposite direction, and remained in hiding throughout the night in the house of one of my kinswomen away towards the city-gate. At last the report spread that the people had taken the palace by a.s.sault, the Naya had been deposed, and Omar enthroned Naba in her stead. Then, feeling that safety was a.s.sured, I ventured forth, but ere I had gone far I met a body of strange fighting men. They were Arabs, and proved to be men from this stronghold of our enemy Samory. After a strenuous attempt to cross the city they had been repulsed by the people, leaving many dead, and in their retreat towards the city-gate they seized me and bore me away in triumph here.”
”How long hast thou been in Koussan?”
”Twenty days ago we arrived, after fighting our way back and losing half our force in skirmishes with the hostile savages of the forest. I was brought here to Samory's harem as slave, attired in the garments I now wear, loaded with jewels torn from the body of one of his favourites, who, incurring his displeasure, had been promptly strangled by the chief of the negro eunuchs, and placed in an apartment with three other slaves to do my bidding, there to await such time as it should please my Arab captor to inspect me. I was contemplating death,” she added, dropping her deep blue eyes. ”If your attack upon the Kasbah had not been delivered I should most a.s.suredly have killed myself to-day ere the going down of the sun.”
”It was fortunate that I recognized thee, or thou wouldst have been hacked to pieces by the keen blades of our savage allies,” I said.
”Take me hence,” she urged panting. ”I cannot bear to hear the shout of the victor and the despairing cry of the vanquished. It is horrible.
Throughout the night we, in the women's quarters, have dreaded the fate awaiting us if the invaders, whom we thought were savages of the forest, should gain the mastery and enter the palace. From the high windows yonder we witnessed the fight, knowing that our lives depended upon its issue, and judge our dismay and despair when, soon after dawn, we saw the Arabs overwhelmed and the Kasbah fall into the hands of their conquerors.
Many of my wretched companions killed themselves with their poignards rather than fall into the hands of the blacks, while the majority hid themselves only to be afterwards discovered and butchered. Ah, it is all terrible, terrible!”
”True,” I answered. ”Yet it is only revenge for the depredations and heartless atrocities committed by these people upon the dwellers in thy border lands. Even at this moment Samory hath a great expedition on the northern confines of Mo, making a vigorous attempt to invade thy country, so that he shall reign upon the Emerald Throne in the place of thy lover Omar.”
”An expedition to invade Mo?” she cried surprised. ”Hath Samory done this; is it his intention to cause Omar's overthrow?”
”Most a.s.suredly it is,” I answered. ”The reason of our presence here in such force was to a.s.sault Koussan in the absence of its picked troops, twenty thousand of whom were we ascertained on their way northward, with the intention of forcing a pa.s.sage through Aribanda and the Hombori Mountains into Mo. Niaro hath led our fighting-men to repel their attack, and he is accompanied by Omar and thy father, while we are here, under Kona's leaders.h.i.+p, to punish Samory for his intrepidity.”
Then she asked how Omar fared, and I explained how it had been believed that she had died, and that all were mourning for her.
”My slave Wyona must have been mistaken for me,” she answered. ”And naturally, as I had given her one of my left-off robes only the day before.”
”Omar believeth thee dead. Thy presence in Mo will indeed bring happiness to his eyes, and gaiety to his heart,” I exclaimed happily.