Part 5 (1/2)
And then, reflecting that at the present moment there was far ly short than of their being unduly prolonged, I at last et to sleep, a fact for which anybody who reads this narrative, if anybody ever does, ain it was just dawning, and the guard and bearers were etting ready for our start The fire had died quite down, and I rose and stretchedin every limb from the da up, holding his hands to his head, and I saw that his face was flushed and his eye bright, and yet yellow round the pupil
”Well, Leo,” I said, ”how do you feel?”
”I feel as though I were going to die,” he answered hoarsely ”My head is splitting, , and I am as sick as a cat”
I whistled, or if I did not whistle I felt inclined to--Leo had got a sharp attack of fever I went to Job, and asked hiood supply, only to find that Job himself was not much better He complained of pains across the back, and dizziness, and was al it was possible to do under the circurains of quinine, and took a slightly smaller dose myself as a matter of precaution After that I found Billali, and explained to hiht had best be done He came with me, and looked at Leo and Job (who on account of his fatness, round face, and small eyes)
”Ah,” he said, ere out of earshot, ”the fever! I thought so The Lion has it badly, but he is young, and he , his attack is not so bad; it is the 'little fever' which he has; that always begins with pains across the back, it will spend itself upon his fat”
”Can they go on, o on If they stop here they will certainly die; also, they will be better in the litters than on the ground By to-night, if all goes well, we shall be across the ood air Come, let us lift them into the litters and start, for it is very bad to stand still in this o”
This we accordingly did, and with a heavy heart I once e journey For the first three hours all went as well as could be expected, and then an accident happened that nearly lost us the pleasure of the company of our venerable friend Billali, whose litter was leading the cavalcade We were going through a particularly dangerous stretch of quagmire, in which the bearers sometimes sank up to their knees Indeed, it was a mystery to me how they contrived to carry the heavy litters at all over such ground as that which ere traversing, though the two spare hands, as well as the four regular ones, had of course to put their shoulders to the pole
Presently, as we blundered and floundered along, there was a sharp cry, then a storm of exclamations, and, last of all, a most tremendous splash, and the whole caravan halted
I jumped out of my litter and ran forward About twenty yards ahead was the edge of one of those sullen peaty pools of which I have spoken, the path ere following running along the top of its bank, that, as it happened, was a steep one Looking towards this pool, toon it, and as for Billali himself, he was nowhere to be seen To make matters clear I may as well explain at once what had happened One of Billali's bearers had unfortunately trodden on a basking snake, which had bitten hio of the pole, and then, finding that he was turasped at the litter to save hiht have been expected The litter was pulled over the edge of the bank, the bearers let go, and the whole thing, including Billali and the ot to the edge of the water neither of them were to be seen; indeed, the unfortunate bearer never was seen again Either he struck his head against soed in the mud, or possibly the snake-bite paralyzed hih Billali was not to be seen, his whereabouts was clear enough fro cloth and curtains of which he was entangled
”He is there! Our father is there!” said one of the er to help him, nor did any of the others They simply stood and stared at the water
”Out of the way, you brutes!” I shouted in English, and throwing offwell out into the horrid sli pool A couple of strokes tookbeneath the cloth
Soed to push it free of hireen slied upon the surface of the water The rest was easy, for Billali was an eminently practical individual, and had the co people often do, so I got hih the ed Such a filthy spectacle as we presented I have never seen before or since, and it will perhaps give sonity of Billali's appearance when I say that, coughing, half- drowned, and covered withto a dripping point, like a China-tail, he still looked venerable and i the bearers, as soon as he had sufficiently recovered to speak, ”ye left er, my son the Baboon, assuredly I should have drowned Well, I will rehtly watery eye, in a way I saw that they did not like, though they tried to appear sulkily indifferent
”As for thee,ood and evil Thou hast saved my life: perchance a day may come when I shall save thine”
After that we cleaned ourselves as best we could, fished out the litter, and went on, minus theto his being an unpopular character, or from native indifference and selfishness of terieve much over his sudden and final disappearance, unless, perhaps, it was the men who had to do his share of the work
XI
THE PLAIN OF KOR
About an hour before sundoe at last, to reat belt of marsh on to land that swelled upwards in a succession of rolling waves Just on the hither side of the crest of the first e halted for the night My first act was to exa, worse than in the , set in, and continued till dawn Not one wink of sleep did I get that night, for I passed it in assisting Ustane, as one of the able nurses I ever saw, to wait upon Leo and Job However, the air here ar too hot, and there were no mosquitoes to speak of Also ere above the level of the marsh mist, which lay stretched beneath us like the dim s globes of fen fire Thus it will be seen that ere, speaking co Leo was quite light-headed, and fancied that he was divided into halves I was dreadfully distressed, and began to wonder with a sort of sick fear what the end of the attack would be Alas! I had heard but too enerally ter Billali ca on, more especially as, in his opinion, if Leo did not reach so, within the next twelve hours, his life would only be a ree with hiot Leo into the litter, and started on, Ustane walking by his side to keep the flies off hiround
Within half an hour of sunrise we had reached the top of the rise of which I have spoken, and a aze Beneath us was a rich stretch of country, verdant with grass and lovely with foliage and flowers In the background, at a distance, so far as I could judge, of soe and extraordinary reatfroht of about five hundred feet above the level of the plain, was a most tremendous and absolutely precipitous wall of bare rock, quite twelve or fifteen hundred feet in height The shape of the in, was round, and of course, as only a segment of its circle was visible, it was difficult to estimate its exact size, which was enormous I afterwards discovered that it could cover less than fifty square ht presented by this great natural castle, starting in solitary grandeur from the level of the plain, I never saw, and I suppose I never shall Its very solitude added to itscliffs see, they were clothed in clouds that lay in fleecy masses upon their broad and level battleazed out across the plain at this thrilling and ht, and I suppose that Billali noticed it, for he brought his litter alongside
”Behold the house of 'She-who-must-be-obeyed!'” he said ”Had ever a queen such a throne before?”
”It is wonderful, my father,” I answered ”But hoe enter Those cliffs look hard to climb”
”Thou shalt see, my Baboon Look now at the path below us What thinkest thou that it is? Thou art a wise man Come, tell me”
I looked, and sahat appeared to be the line of roadway running straight towards the base of the h banks on each side of it, broken here and there, but fairly continuous on the whole, theof which I did not understand It seemed so very odd that anybody should embank a roadway
”Well, my father,” I answered, ”I suppose that it is a road, otherwise I should have been inclined to say that it was the bed of a river, or rather,” I added, observing the extraordinary directness of the cutting, ”of a canal”
Billali--who, by the as none the worse for his iely as he replied-- ”Thou art right, my son It is a channel cut out by those ere before us in this place to carry aater Of this I am sure: within the rocky circle of the reat lake But those ere before us, by wonderful arts of which I know naught, hewed a path for the water through the solid rock of theeven to the bed of the lake But first they cut the channel that thou seest across the plain Then, when at last the water burst out, it rushed down the channel that had been made to receive it, and crossed this plain till it reached the low land behind the rise, and there, perchance, it h which we have come Then when the lake was drained dry, the people whereof I speak built a ht but ruins and the nae hewed the caves and passages that thou wilt see”
”It may be,” I answered; ”but if so, how is it that the lake does not fill up again with the rains and the water of the springs?”
”Nay, my son, the people were a wise people, and they left a drain to keep it clear Seest thou the river to the right?” and he pointed to a fair-sized stream that wound away across the plain, some four h the oes in At first, perhaps, the water ran down this canal, but afterwards the people turned it, and used the cutting for a road”
”And is there then no other place where one h that drain?”
”There is a place,” he answered, ”where cattle and men on foot htest thou search and shouldst never find it It is only used once a year, when the herds of cattle that have been fatting on the slopes of the mountain, and on this plain, are driven into the space within”
”And does She live there always?” I asked, ”or does she come at times without the mountain?”
”Nay, my son, where she is, there she is”
By noell on to the great plain, and I was exaht the varied beauty of its sely, or atof large size, and belonging apparently to a variety of evergreen oak There were also h, and the largest andclouds of jewelled honeysuckers and great-winged butterflies Wandering about arass were all varieties of game, froe herd), eland, quagga, and sable antelope, the most beautiful of all the bucks, not to ame, and three ostriches which scudded away at our approach like white drift before a gale So plentiful was the gale barrel sporting Martini withtoo cu himself under one of the oak-like trees, I jumped out of the litter, and proceeded to creep as near to hihty yards, and then turned his head, and stared ataway I lifted the rifle, and taking him about midway down the shoulder, for he was side on to me, fired I never made a cleaner shot or a better kill in all ht up into the air and fell dead The bearers, who had all halted to see the perforave a murmur of surprise, an unwonted compliment from these sullen people, who never appear to be surprised at anything, and a party of the guard at once ran off to cut the ani to have a look at hih I had been in the habit of killing eland all rees in the esti as a very high-class manifestation of witchcraft As a matter of fact, however, I had never seen an eland in a wild state before Billali received me with enthusiasm
”It is wonderful, reat ly Had I not seen, surely I would never have believed And thou sayest that thou wilt teach me to slay in this fashi+on?”
”Certainly, ”
But all the saan to fire I would without fail lie down or take refuge behind a tree
After this little incident nothing happened of any note till about an hour and a half before sundoe arrived beneath the shadow of the towering volcanic mass that I have already described It is quite irandeur as it appeared tothe bed of the ancient watercourse towards the spot where the rich brown-hued cliff shot up from precipice to precipice till its crown lost itself in a cloud All I can say is that it almost awed reatness On ent up the bright and sunny slope, till at last the creeping shadows froan to pass through a cutting hewn in the living rock Deeper and deeper grew this marvellous work, which must, I should say, have employed thousands of men for many years Indeed, hoas ever executed at all without the aid of blasting- powder or dynaine It is and must remain one of the mysteries of that wild land I can only suppose that these cuttings and the vast caves that had been hollowed out of the rocks they pierced were the State undertakings of the people of Kor, who lived here in the diyptian monuments, were executed by the forced labour of tens of thousands of captives, carried on through an indefinite number of centuries But ere the people?
At last we reached the face of the precipice itself, and found ourselves looking into the mouth of a dark tunnel that forcibly reineers in the construction of railway lines Out of this tunnel flowed a considerable streah I do not think that I have mentioned it, we had followed this stream, which ultimately developed into the river I have already described as winding away to the right, fro in the solid rock co formed a channel for the streaht feet perhaps --was devoted to the purposes of a roadway At the ter, however, the stream turned off across the plain and followed a channel of its own At the mouth of the cave the cavalcade was halted, and, while thesoht with the from his litter, informed me politely but firmly that the orders of She were that ere now to be blindfolded, so that we should not learn the secret of the paths through the bowels of the h, but Job, as now verythe journey, did not like it at all, fancying, I believe, that it was but a preli hot- potted He was, however, a little consoled when I pointed out to him that there were no hot pots at hand, and, so far as I knew, no fire to heat the restlessly for hours, he had, to my deep thankfulness, at last dropped off into a sleep or stupor, I do not knohich, so there was no need to blindfold hi a piece of the yellowish linen whereof those of the A in particular htly round the eyes This linen I afterwards discovered was taken from the tombs, and was not, as I had at first supposed, of native e was then knotted at the back of the head, and finally brought down again and the ends bound under the chin to prevent its slipping Ustane was, by the way, also blindfolded, I do not knohy, unless it was from fear that she should impart the secrets of the route to us
This operation perfor sound of the footsteps of the bearers and the increased noise of the water caused by reverberation in a confined space, I knew that ere entering into the bowels of the greatinto the dead heart of the rock we knew not whither, but I was getting used to eerie sensations by this ti So I lay still, and listened to the tra of the water, and tried to believe that I was enjoying myself Presently the men set up the ht ere captured in the whaleboat, and the effect produced by their voices was very curious, and quite indescribable After a while the air began to get exceedingly thick and heavy, soto choke, till at length the litter took a sharp turn, then another and another, and the sound of the running water ceased After this the air was fresher again, but the turns were continuous, and toI tried to keep a ht ever be necessary for us to try and escape by this route, but, needless to say, failed utterly Another half-hour or so passed, and then suddenly I became aware that ere once e and feel its freshness on my face A few more minutes and the caravan halted, and I heard Billali order Ustane to re for her attentions I got the knot of mine loose, and looked out
As I anticipated, we had passed right through the precipice, and were now on the farther side, and i I noticed was that the cliff is not nearly so high here, not so high I should say by five hundred feet, which proved that the bed of the lake, or rather of the vast ancient crater in which we stood, wasplain For the rest, we found ourselves in a huge rock-surrounded cup, not unlike that of the first place where we had sojourned, only ten ti line of the opposite cliffs A great portion of the plain thus enclosed by nature was cultivated, and fenced in alls of stone placed there to keep the cattle and goats, of which there were large herds about, frorass ht that I could see the outline of colossal ruins I had no ti more at the er, similar in every particular to those e were already fah they spoke little, pressed round us so closely as to obscure the view to a person lying in a haed in companies, and marshalled by officers who held ivory wands in their hands, ca, so far as I could ed from the face of the precipice like ants from their burrows These men as well as their officers were all robed in addition to the usual leopard skin, and, as I gathered, foruard of She herself
Their leader advanced to Billali, saluted hi his ivory wand transversely across his forehead, and then asked so answered hi the side of the cliff, our cavalcade of litters following in their track After going thus for about half a mile we halted onceabout sixty feet in height by eighty wide, and here Billali descended finally, and requested Job and myself to do the sa of the sort I did so, and we entered the great cave, into which the light of the setting sun penetrated for soht it was faintly illuminated with lamps which seemed to me to stretch away for an alhts of an e I noticed was that the walls were covered with sculptures in bas-relief, of a sort, pictorially speaking, similar to those that I have described upon the vases;-- love-scenes principally, then hunting pictures, pictures of executions, and the torture of cri of a, presu whence our hosts had derived this pleasant practice There were very few battle-pieces, though , and from this fact I am led to believe that this people were not much subject to attack by exterior foes, either on account of the isolation of their position or because of their great strength Between the pictures were columns of stone characters of a formation absolutely new to yptian, nor Hebrew, nor assyrian--that I as than any other that I am acquainted with Near to the entrance of the cave both pictures and writings orn away, but further in they were in many cases absolutely fresh and perfect as the day on which the sculptor had ceased work on theuards did not come further than the entrance to the cave, where they for the place itself ere, however, met by a , which, as it afterwards appeared that he was a deaf les to the great cave, at a distance of soallery, that was pierced into the rock both to the right and to the left of the uards, froued that it was the entrance to the apartallery was unguarded, and along it thea few yards down this passage, which was lighted with la a curtain rassover the doorway This the mute drew back with another profound obeisance, and led the way into a good-sized apartreat relief lighted by means of a shaft pierced in the face of the precipice In this roo, and beautifully tanned leopard skins to serve as blankets