CHAPTER XV--SHOOKS-GEE'S STORY--A CANNIBAL QUEEN
What is called "natural curiosity" in our country, where almost everyman is a Paul Pry, is no trait of the Indian's character. Or if he everdoes feel such an impulse, it is instantly checked. Curiosity is butthe attribute of a squaw, a savage would tell you, but even squaws willtry to prevent such a weed from flourishing in their hearts.
That was the reason why neither the father nor the mother of Benee'slittle lady-love thought of asking him a single question concerning hisadventures until he had eaten a hearty meal and had enjoyed a refreshingsleep.
But when Benee sat up at last and quaffed the mate that Weenah had madehaste to get him, and just as the day was beginning to merge into thetwilight of summer, he began to tell his friends and his love someportion of his wonderful adventures, even from the day when he hadbidden the child Weenah a tearful farewell and betaken himself to awandering life in the woods.
His young life's story was indeed a strange one,
"Wherein he spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field; ... of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven.
----
The while Weenah
"... gave him for his pains a world of sighs. 'T was strange, 't was passing strange, 'T was pitiful, 't was wondrous pitiful: She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished That heaven had made her such a man."
Then when Benee came down to that portion of his long story when firsthe found the children and their mighty wolf-hound lost in the forest,Weenah and her parents listened with greater interest and intensity thanever.
There was a fire on the rude, low hearth--a fire of wood, of peat, andof moss; for at the great elevation at which this cannibal land issituated the nights are chilly.
It was a fire that gave fitful light as well as heat. It fell on thefaces of Benee's listeners, and cast shadows grotesque behind them. Itbeautified Weenah's face till Benee thought she looked like one of theangels that poor Peggy used to tell him about.
Then he related to them all his suspicions of Peter, but did notactually accuse him of bringing about the abduction of Peggy, to servesome vile and unknown purpose of his own. Next he spoke, yet spoke butlightly, of his long, long march, and the incidents and adventurestherewith connected.
There was much, therefore, that Benee had to tell, but there was alsomuch that he had to learn or to be told; and now that he had finished,it was Shooks-gee's turn to take up the story.
I wish I could do justice to this man's language, which was grandlyfigurative, or to his dramatic way of talking, accompanied as it waswith look and gesture that would have elicited applause on any Europeanstage. I cannot do so, therefore shall not try; but the following isthe pith of his story.
This Indian's house was on the very outside and most northerly end ofthe great wild plateau which was the home of these savages andcannibals.
The queen, a terrible monarch, and bloodthirsty in the extreme, used tohold her court and lived on a strange mountain or hill, in the verycentre of the rough tree and bush clad plain.
For many, many a long year she had lived here, and to her court Indianscame from afar to do her homage, bringing with them cloth of crimson,wine and oil, which they had stolen or captured in warfare from thewhite men of Madeira valley.
When these presents came, the coca which her courtiers used to chew allday long, and the mate they drank, were for a time--for weeksindeed--discarded for the wine and fire-water of the pale-face.
Fearful were the revels then held on that lone mountain.
The queen was dainty, so too were her fierce courtiers.
When the revels first began she and they could eat the raw orhalf-roasted flesh of calves and baby-llamas, but when their potationswaxed deeper, and appetite began to fail, then the orgies commenced inearnest. Nothing would her majesty eat now--horrible to say--butchildren, and her courtiers, armed to the teeth, would be sent to scourthe plains, to visit the mud huts of her people, and drag therefrom themost beautiful and plump boys or girls procurable.
I will not tell of the fearful and awfully unnatural humansacrifice--the murder of the innocents--that now took place.
Demons could not have been more revolting in their cruelties than werethose savage courtiers as they obeyed the queen's behests.
Let me drop the curtain over this portion of the tale. Well, thisparticular cottage or hut, being on the confines of the country, had notbeen visited by the queen's fearsome soldiers. But even had they comethey would have found that Weenah was far away in the woods, for herfather Shooks-gee loved her much. But one evening there came up out ofthe dark pinewood forest, that lay to the north, a great band ofwandering natives.
They were all armed and under the command of one of her majesty's mostbloodthirsty and daring chiefs.
Hand to claw this man had fought pumas and jaguars, and slain them,armed only with his two-edged knife.
This savage Rob Roy M'Gregor despised both bow-and-arrow and sling.Only at close quarters would he fight with man or beast, and although hebore the scars and slashes of many a fearful encounter, he had alwayscome off victorious.
Six feet four inches in height was this war-Indian if an inch, and hisdress was a picturesque costume of skins with the tails attached. Ahuge mat of hair, his own, with emu's feathers drooping therefrom, washis only head-gear, but round his neck he wore a chain of polishedpebbles, with heavy gold rings, in many of which rubies and diamondssparkled and shone.
But, ghastly to relate, between each pebble and between the rings ofgold and precious stones, was threaded a tanned human ear. More thantwenty of these were there.
They had been cut from the heads of white men whom this chief--Kaloomahwas his name--had slain, and the rings had been torn from their deadfingers.
This was the band then that had arrived as the sun was going down at thehut of Shooks-gee, and this was their chief.
The latter demanded food for his men, and Shooks-gee, with his tremblingwife--Weenah was hidden--made haste to obey, and a great fire was litout of doors, and flesh of the llama hung over it to roast.
But the strangest thing was this. Seated on a hardy little mule was asad but beautiful girl--white she was, and unmistakably English. Hereyes were very large and wistful, and she looked at Kaloomah and hisband in evident fear and dread, starting and shrinking from the chiefwhenever he came near her or spoke.
But the daintiest portion of the food was handed to her, and she ate insilence, as one will who eats in fear.
The wild band slept in the bush, a special bed of dry grass being madefor the little white queen, as Kaloomah called her, and a savage set towatch her while she slept.
Next morning, when the wild chief and his braves started onwards,Shooks-gee was obliged to march along with them.
Kaloomah had need of him. That was all the explanation vouchsafed.
But this visit to the queen's home had given Weenah's father an insightinto court life and usages that he could not otherwise have possessed.
Kaloomah's band bore along with them huge bales of cloth and large boxesof beads. How they had become possessed of these Shooks-gee never knew,and could not guess.
The grim and haughty queen, surrounded by her body-guard of grotesqueand hideous warriors with their slashed and fearful faces, and thepeleles hanging in the lobes of their ears, was seated at the fartherend of a great wall, and on a throne covered with the skins of wildbeasts.
All in front the floor was carpeted with crimson, and her majestysparkled with gold ornaments. A tiara of jewels encircled her brow, anda living snake of immense size, with gray eyes that never closed, formeda girdle round her waist.
In her hand she held a poisoned spear, and at her feet crouched a hugejaguar.
She was a tyrant queen, reigning over a people who, though savage, andcannibals to boot, had never dared to gainsay a word or o
rder sheuttered.
Passionate in the extreme, too, she was, and if a slave or subject daredto disobey, a prick from the poisoned spear was the reward, and he orshe was dragged out into the bush to writhe and die in terrible agony.
Probably a more frightful woman never reigned as queen, even in canniballands.
Kaloomah, on his arrival, bent himself down--nay, but threw himself onhis knees and face abjectly before her, as if he were scarcely worthy tobe her footstool.
But she greeted his arrival with a smile, and bade him arise.
"Many presents have we brought," he said in the figurative language ofthe Indian. "Many presents to the beautiful mother of the sun. Clothof scarlet, of blue, and of green, cloth of rainbow colours, jewels andbeads, and the fire-water of the pale-faces."
"Produce me the fire-water of the pale-faces," she returned. "I woulddrink."
Her voice was husky, hoarse, and horrible.
Kaloomah beckoned to a slave, and in a few minutes a cocoa-nut shell,filled with rum, was held to her lips.
The queen drank, and seemed happier after this. Kaloomah thought hemight now venture to broach another subject.
"We have brought your majesty also a little daughter of the pale-faces!"
Then Peggy--for the reader will have guessed it was she--was ledtrembling in before her, and made to kneel.
But the queen's brows had lowered when she beheld the child's greatbeauty. She made her advance, and seizing her by the hand, held her atarm's-length.
"SHE ... HELD HER AT ARM'S LENGTH"]
"Take her away!" she cried. "I can love her not. Put her in prisonbelow ground!"
And the beautiful girl was hurried away.
To be put in prison below the ground meant to be buried alive. ButKaloomah had no intention of obeying the queen on this occasion, and thegirl pale-face was conducted to a well-lighted bamboo hut and placed incharge of a woman slave.
This slave looked a heart-broken creature, but seemed kind and good, andnow made haste to spread the girl's bed of leaves on a bamboo bench, andto place before her milk of the llama, with much luscious fruit andnuts. She needed little pressing to eat, or drink, or sleep. The poorchild had almost ceased to wonder, or even to be afraid of anything.
But now comes the last act in Shooks-gee's strange story.
Two days after the arrival of the warlike band from the far north,Kaloomah had once more presented himself before the queen. He cameunannounced this time, and with him were seven fierce-looking soldiers,armed to the teeth with slings and stones, with bows and arrows, andwith spears.
The conversation that had ensued was somewhat as follows, beinginterpreted into our plain and humdrum English:--
_The Queen_. "Why advances my general and slave except on his knees,even as come the frogs?"
_Kaloomah_. "My queen will pardon me. I will not so offend again.Your majesty has reigned long and happily."
_Q_. "True, slave."
She seized the poisoned spear as she spoke, and would have used itfreely; but at a word from Kaloomah it was wrenched from her grasp.
_K_. "Your majesty's reign has ended! The old queen must make room forthe beautiful daughter of the pale-faces. Yet will your beneficencelive in the person of the new queen, and in our hearts--the hearts ofthose who have fought for you. For we each and all shall taste of yourroasted flesh!"
Then, turning quickly to the soldiers, "Seize her and drag her forth!"he cried, "and do your duty speedily."
I must not be too graphic in my description of the scene that followed.But the ex-queen was led to a darksome hut, and there she was speedilydespatched.
That night high revelry was held in the royal camp of the cannibals.Many prisoners were killed and roasted, and the feast was a fearful andawful one.
But not a chief was there in all that crowd who did not partake of theflesh of his late queen, while horn trumpets blared and war tom-tomswere wildly beaten.
A piece of the fearful flesh was even given to the pale-face girl'sattendant, with orders that she must make her charge partake thereof.
The girl was spared this terrible ordeal, however.
But long after midnight the revelry and the wild music went on, thenceased, and all was still.
The unhappy prisoner lay listening till sleep stole down on a star-rayand wafted her off to the land of sweet forgetfulness.
----
Next day, amidst wild unearthly clamour and music, she was led from thetent and seated on the throne. Garments of otter skins and crimson clothwere cast on the throne and draped over the beautiful child. She wasencircled with flowers of rarest hue, and emu's feathers were stuck,plume-like, in her bonnie hair.
Meanwhile the trumpets blared more loudly, and the tom-toms were struckwith treble force, then all ceased at once, and there was a silence deepas death, as everyone prostrated himself or herself before thenewly-made young queen.
Kaloomah rose at last, and advanced with bended back and head towardsher, and with an intuitive sense of her new-born dignity she touched himgently on the shoulder and bade him stand erect.
He did so, and then placed in her hand the sceptre of the deadqueen--the poison-tipped spear.
Whatever might happen now, the girl knew that she was safe for a time,and her spirits rose in consequence.
This, then, was the story told by Shooks-gee, the father of Benee'schild-love.
----
Had Dick Temple himself been there he could no longer have doubted thefidelity of poor Benee.
But there was much to be done, and it would need all the tact and skillof this wily Indian to carry out his plans.
He could trust his father and mother, as he called Weenah's parents, andhe now told them that he had come, if possible, to deliver Peggy, or ifthat were impossible, to hand her a letter that should give her bothcomfort and hope.
Queen Peggy's apartments on the mountain were cannibalistically regal intheir splendour. The principal entrance to her private room wasapproached by a long avenue of bamboo rails, completely lined withskulls and bones, and the door thereof was also surrounded by the samekind of horrors.
But every one of her subjects was deferential to her, and appearedawe-struck with her beauty.
And now Benee consulted with his parents as to what had best be done.