Part 11 (2/2)
Presently we cahtly took to be a teround, and apparently arranged in a series of courts, each one enclosing another of smaller size, on the principle of a Chinese nest of boxes, the courts being separated one froe columns And, while I think of it, Iabout the shape of these columns, which rese fashi+oned with a kind of waist at the centre, and swelling out above and below At first we thought that this shape was est the feious architects ofday, however, as ent up the slopes of the e quantity of the rew exactly in this shape, and I have now no doubt but that the first designer of those coluraceful bends of those very palht or ten thousand years ago, as now, beautified the slopes of the mountain that had once formed the shores of the volcanic lake
At the facade of this huge tee as that of El-Karnac, at Thebes, sohteen to twenty feet in diaht, our little procession was halted, and Ayesha descended from her litter
”There was a spot here, Kallikrates,” she said to Leo, who had run up to help her dohere one yptian asp rest therein, but since then have I not set foot here, nor any man, and perchance it has fallen,” and, followed by the rest of us, she passed up a vast flight of broken and ruined steps into the outer court, and looked round into the gloo a few paces along the wall to the left, halted
”It is here,” she said, and at the same time beckoned to the two ings, to advance One of the a laer when on a journey nearly always carried with thehted brazier, from which to provide fire) The tinder of this brazier was ments of mummy carefully daed, this unholy compound would smoulder away for hours[] As soon as the lamp was lit we entered the place before which Ayesha had halted It turned out to be a chamber hollowed in the thickness of the wall, and, fro a massive stone table in it, I should think that it had probably served as a living-rooreat temple
[] After all we are not er in these yptian, is, I believe, a pigment much used by artists, and especially by those of them who direct their talents to the reproduction of the works of the oldthe place out andit as comfortable as circumstances and the darkness would permit, we ate some cold meat, at least Leo, Job and I did, for Ayesha, as I think I have said elsewhere, never touched anything except cakes of flour, fruit and water While ere still eating, the moon, which was at her full, rose above the an to flood the place with silver
”Wot ye why I have brought you here to-night,her head upon her hand and watching the great orb as she rose, like some heavenly queen, above the solee, but knowest thou, Kallikrates, that thou liest at this moment upon the very spot where thy dead body lay when I bore thee back to those caves of Kor so o? It all returns to ht!” and she shuddered
Here Leo jued his seat However the reht affect Ayesha, it clearly had few charht you,” went on Ayesha presently, ”that ye ht that ever the eye ofover ruined Kor When ye have done your eating--I would that I could teach you to eat naught but fruit, Kallikrates, but that will come after thou hast laved in the fire Once I, too, ate flesh like a brute beast When ye have done ill go out, and I will show you this great temple and the God whoot up at once, and started And here againof measurements and details of the various courts of the te that I had thenificent as it was even in its ruin, almost beyond the power of realisation Court upon dihty pillars--soateways) sculptured from pedestal to capital--space upon space of eination than any crowded streets And over all, the dead silence of the dead, the sense of utter loneliness, and the brooding spirit of the Past! How beautiful it was, and yet how drear! We did not dare to speak aloud Ayesha herself ed in the presence of an antiquity co; we only whispered, and our whispers seemed to run froht fell theall their rents and i their hoar ht It was a wonderful sight to see the fulldown on the ruined fane of Kor It was a wonderful thing to think for how many thousands of years the dead orb above and the dead city below had gazed thus upon each other, and in the utter solitude of space poured forth each to each the tale of their lost life and long-departed glory The white light fell, and rown courts like the spirits of old priests haunting the habitations of their worshi+p--the white light fell, and the long shadows grew till the beauty and grandeur of each scene and the untamed majesty of its present Death seemed to sink into our very souls, and speakthe porave had sed, and even otten
”Coazed, I know not for how long, ”and I will show you the stony flower of Loveliness and Wonder's very crown, if yet it stands to ing for that which is behind the veil,” and, without waiting for an answer, she led us through two more pillared courts into the inner shrine of the old fane
And there, in the centre of the inht have been some fifty yards square, or a little randest allegorical work of Art that the genius of her children has ever given to the world For in the exact centre of the court, placed upon a thick square slab of rock, was a huge round ball of dark stone, so on the ball was a colossal winged figure of a beauty so entrancing and divine that when I first gazed upon it, illuht of the moon, my breath stood still, and for an instant
The statue was hewn froes, it shone as the ht was, I should say, a trifle over twenty feet It was the winged figure of a woman of such marvellous loveliness and delicacy of form that the size seemed rather to add to than to detract fro forward and poising herself upon her half-spread wings as though to preserve her balance as she leant Her arms were outstretched like those of some woman about to eave an iracious for-- the face, which was thinly veiled, so that we could only trace the auzy veil was thrown round and about the head, and of its two ends one fell down across her left breast, which was outlined beneath it, and one, now broken, streamed away upon the air behind her
”Who is she?” I asked, as soon as I could take uess, oh Holly?” answered Ayesha ”Where then is thy i to its children to unveil her face See what is writ upon the pedestal Without doubt it is taken from the book of Scriptures of these men of Kor,” and she led the way to the foot of the statue, where an inscription of the usual Chinese-looking hieroglyphics was so deeply graven as to be still quite legible, at least to Ayesha According to her translation it ran thus:-- ”Is there no man that will draw my veil and look upon my face, for it is very fair? Unto hiive hiood works”
And a voice cried, ”Though all those who seek after thee desire thee, behold! Virgin art thou, and Virgin shalt thou go till Time be done No man is there born of woman who may draw thy veil and live, nor shall be By Death only can thy veil be drawn, oh Truth!”
And Truth stretched out her arht not find her, nor look upon her face to face
”Thou seest,” said Ayesha, when she had finished translating, ”Truth was the Goddess of the people of old Kor, and to her they built their shrines, and her they sought; knowing that they should never find, still sought they”
”And so,” I added sadly, ”do men seek to this very hour, but they find out; and, as this Scripture saith, nor shall they; for in Death only is Truth found”
Then with one more look at this veiled and spiritualised loveliness-- which was so perfect and so pure that onespirit shone through the hts--this poet's dreaet while I live, we turned and went back through the vast moonlit courts to the spot whence we had started I never saw the statue again, which I thethe World whereon the figure stood, lines were drawn, that probably, had there been light enough, we should have discovered to be a map of the Universe as it was known to the people of Kor It is at any rate suggestive of so-dead worshi+ppers of Truth had recognised the fact that the globe is round
XXIV
WALKING THE PLANK
Next day the ot the sleep out of our eyes, and gone through a perfunctory wash at a spring which still welled up into the rele of the vast outer court, we found She standing by the litter ready to start, while old Billali and the two bearer e As usual, Ayesha was veiled like the ot the idea of covering up her beauty from that statue?) I noticed, however, that she seemed very depressed, and had none of that proud and buoyant bearing which would have betrayed her a a thousand women of the same stature, even if they had been veiled like herself She looked up as we careeted us Leo asked her how she had slept
”Ill, e and hideous dreah my brain, and I know not what they h some evil overshadowed me; and yet how can evil touch me? I wonder,” she went on with a sudden outbreak of woht happen to , thou wouldst think gently of me? I wonder, ain, as for so ?”
Then, without waiting for an answer, she went on: ”Coo, and before another day is born in yonder blue should we stand in the place of Life”
In five h the vast ruined city, which loo in a way that was at once grand and oppressive Just as the first ray of the rising sun shot like a golden arroart this storied desolation we gained the further gateway of the outer wall, and having given one h which we had journeyed, and (with the exception of Job, for whoret that we had not had reat moat, and on to the plain beyond
As the sun rose so did Ayesha's spirits, till by breakfast-tily set down her previous depression to the associations of the spot where she had slept
”These barbarians swear that Kor is haunted,” she said, ”and of a truth I do believe their saying, for never did I know so ill a night save one I remember it now It was on that very spot when thou didst lie dead at ain; it is a place of evil omen”
After a very brief halt for breakfast we pressed on with such good will that by two o'clock in the afternoon ere at the foot of the vast wall of rock that formed the lip of the volcano, and which at this point towered up precipitously above us for fifteen hundred or two thousand feet Here we halted, certainly not to my astonisho any farther
”Now,” said Ayesha, as she descended from her litter, ”doth our labour but commence, for here do we part with these men, and henceforwardBillali, ”do thou and these slaves re By to-morrow at the midday shall we be with thee--if not, wait”
Billali bowed hu should be obeyed if they stopped there till they grew old
”And thisto Job; ”best is it that he should tarry also, for if his heart be not high and his courage great, perchance soht overtake hio are not fit for common eyes”
I translated this to Job, who instantly and earnestly entreated me, almost with tears in his eyes, not to leave hi worse than he had already seen, and that he was terrified to death at the idea of being left alone with those ”duht, would probably take the opportunity to hot-pot hied her shoulders, and answered, ”Well, let hiht to me; on his own head be it, and he will serve to bear the lamp and this,” and she pointed to a narrow plank, so bearing-pole of her haht to make curtains spread out better, but, as it now appeared, for some unknown purpose connected with our extraordinary undertaking
Accordingly, the plank, which, though tough, was very light, was given to Job to carry, and also one of the laether with a spare jar of oil, while Leo loaded himself with the provisions and some water in a kid's skin When this was done She bade Billali and the six bearer nolias about a hundred yards away, and remain there under pain of death till we had vanished They bowed huave me a friendly shake of the hand, and whispered that he had rather that it was I than he as going on this wonderful expedition with ”She-who-ree with hi briefly asked us if ere ready, Ayesha turned, and gazed up the towering cliff
”Goodnessto cli in a condition of half-fascinated, half-expectant an to climb the cliff, and of course we had to follow her It was perfectlyfroes The ascent was not, however, so difficult as it seeh there were one or two nasty places where it did not do to look behind you, the fact being that the rock still sloped here, and was not absolutely precipitous as it was higher up In this ith no great labour, ht of so- place, the only really troubleso so drew so-point, for ent up like a crab, sideways Presently we reached a ledge, narrow enough at first, but which widened as we followed it, and moreover sloped inwards like the petal of a flower, so that as we followed it we gradually got into a kind of rut or fold of rock, that grew deeper and deeper, till at last it resembled a Devonshi+re lane in stone, and hid us perfectly froaze of anybody on the slope below, if there had been anybody to gaze This lane (which appeared to be a natural formation) continued for some fifty or sixty paces, and then suddenly ended in a cave, also natural, running at right angles to it I am sure it was a natural cave, and not hollowed by the hand of ular and contorted shape and course, which gave it the appearance of having been blown bodily in thethe line of the least resistance All the caves hollowed by the ancients of Kor, on the contrary, were cut out with the ularity and symmetry At the ht the two la the otherthe lead, she advanced down the cavern, picking her ith great care, as indeed it was necessary to do, for the floor was ular--streith boulders like the bed of a stream, and in some places pitted with deep holes, in which it would have been easy to break one's leg
This cavern we pursued for twentyto its numerous twists and turns no easy task--about a quarter of a
At last, however, we halted at its farther end, and whilst I was still trying to pierce the gloouished both the lamps
Ayesha called to us, and we crept up to her, for she was a little in front, and were rewarded with a view that was positively appalling in its gloohty chash it in a far past age by soh it had been cleft by stroke upon stroke of the lightning This chasm, which was bounded by a precipice on the hither, and presuh we could not see it, on the farther side also, may have measured any width across, but from its darkness I do not think it can have been very broad It was impossible to make out much of its outline, or how far it ran, for the si was so far from the upper surface of the cliff, at least fifteen hundred or two thousand feet, that only a very diled down to us froave on to a most curious and treulf before us, for a distance of so to a sharp point at its ter that I can think of so e spur was attached only to the parent precipice at its base, which was, of course, enor Otherwise it was utterly unsupported
”Here iddiness overcoulf beneath, for of a truth it hath no bottoet scared, she started walking along the spur, leaving us to follow her as best wehis plank, while Leo brought up the rear It was a wonderful sight to see this intrepid wo that dreadful place For one but a very few yards, what between the pressure of the air and the awful sense of the consequences that a slip would entail, I found it necessary to go down on my hands and knees and crawl, and so did the other two
But Ayesha never condescended to this On she went, leaning her body against the gusts of wind, and never see to lose her head or her balance
In a few e, which got narrower at every step, and then all of a sudden a great gust caainst it, but the strong draught got under her dark cloak, and tore it fro like a wounded bird It was dreadful to see it go, till it was lost in the blackness I clung to the saddle of rock, and looked round, while, like a living thing, the great spur vibrated with a huht was a truly awesoloom between earth and heaven Beneath us were hundreds upon hundreds of feet of erew darker, till at last it was absolutely black, and at what depth it ended is iddy air, and far, far away a line of blue sky And down this vast gulf upon which ere pinnacled the great draught dashed and roared, driving clouds and misty wreaths of vapour before it, till ere nearly blinded, and utterly confused
The whole position was so tremendous and so absolutely unearthly, that I believe it actually lulled our sense of terror, but to this hour I often see it in my dreams, and at its mere phantasy wake up covered with cold sweat
”On! on!” cried the white forone, She was robed in white, and looked ale than a woman; ”On, or ye will fall and be dashed to pieces Keep your eyes fixed upon the ground, and closely hug the rock”
We obeyed her, and crept painfully along the quivering path, against which the wind shrieked and wailed as it shook it, causing it to -fork On ent, I do not know for how long, only gazing round now and again, when it was absolutely necessary, until at lastthat ere on the very tip of the spur, a slab of rock, little larger than an ordinary table, that throbbed and ju to the ground, and looked about us, while Ayesha stood leaning out against the wind, dohich her long hair streamed, and, absolutely heedless of the hideous depth that yawned beneath, pointed before her Then hy the narrow plank had been provided, which Job and I had painfully dragged along between us Before us was an e, as yet we could not see what, for here--either owing to the shadow of the opposite cliff, or froht