CHAPTER XVI
THE PLACE OF DEATH
It was already dark on the third day after the scene described in theprevious chapter when we camped in some huts at the foot of the "ThreeWitches," as the triangle of mountains is called to which Solomon'sGreat Road runs. Our party consisted of our three selves and Foulata,who waited on us--especially on Good--Infadoos, Gagool, who was bornealong in a litter, inside which she could be heard muttering andcursing all day long, and a party of guards and attendants. Themountains, or rather the three peaks of the mountain, for the mass wasevidently the result of a solitary upheaval, were, as I have said, inthe form of a triangle, of which the base was towards us, one peakbeing on our right, one on our left, and one straight in front of us.Never shall I forget the sight afforded by those three towering peaksin the early sunlight of the following morning. High, high above us, upinto the blue air, soared their twisted snow-wreaths. Beneath thesnow-line the peaks were purple with heaths, and so were the wild moorsthat ran up the slopes towards them. Straight before us the whiteribbon of Solomon's Great Road stretched away uphill to the foot of thecentre peak, about five miles from us, and there stopped. It was itsterminus.
I had better leave the feelings of intense excitement with which we setout on our march that morning to the imagination of those who read thishistory. At last we were drawing near to the wonderful mines that hadbeen the cause of the miserable death of the old Portuguese Dom threecenturies ago, of my poor friend, his ill-starred descendant, and also,as we feared, of George Curtis, Sir Henry's brother. Were we destined,after all that we had gone through, to fare any better? Evil befellthem, as that old fiend Gagool said; would it also befall us? Somehow,as we were marching up that last stretch of beautiful road, I could nothelp feeling a little superstitious about the matter, and so I thinkdid Good and Sir Henry.
For an hour and a half or more we tramped on up the heather-fringedway, going so fast in our excitement that the bearers of Gagool'shammock could scarcely keep pace with us, and its occupant piped out tous to stop.
"Walk more slowly, white men," she said, projecting her hideousshrivelled countenance between the grass curtains, and fixing hergleaming eyes upon us; "why will ye run to meet the evil that shallbefall you, ye seekers after treasure?" and she laughed that horriblelaugh which always sent a cold shiver down my back, and for a whilequite took the enthusiasm out of us.
However, on we went, till we saw before us, and between ourselves andthe peak, a vast circular hole with sloping sides, three hundred feetor more in depth, and quite half a mile round.
"Can't you guess what this is?" I said to Sir Henry and Good, who werestaring in astonishment at the awful pit before us.
They shook their heads.
"Then it is clear that you have never seen the diamond diggings atKimberley. You may depend on it that this is Solomon's Diamond Mine.Look there," I said, pointing to the strata of stiff blue clay whichwere yet to be seen among the grass and bushes that clothed the sidesof the pit, "the formation is the same. I'll be bound that if we wentdown there we should find 'pipes' of soapy brecciated rock. Look, too,"and I pointed to a series of worn flat slabs of stone that were placedon a gentle slope below the level of a watercourse which in some pastage had been cut out of the solid rock; "if those are not tables onceused to wash the 'stuff,' I'm a Dutchman."
At the edge of this vast hole, which was none other than the pit markedon the old Dom's map, the Great Road branched into two and circumventedit. In many places, by the way, this surrounding road was builtentirely out of blocks of stone, apparently with the object ofsupporting the edges of the pit and preventing falls of reef. Alongthis path we pressed, driven by curiosity to see what were the threetowering objects which we could discern from the hither side of thegreat gulf. As we drew near we perceived that they were Colossi of somesort or another, and rightly conjectured that before us sat the three"Silent Ones" that are held in such awe by the Kukuana people. But itwas not until we were quite close to them that we recognised the fullmajesty of these "Silent Ones."
There, upon huge pedestals of dark rock, sculptured with rude emblemsof the Phallic worship, separated from each other by a distance offorty paces, and looking down the road which crossed some sixty milesof plain to Loo, were three colossal seated forms--two male and onefemale--each measuring about thirty feet from the crown of its head tothe pedestal.
The female form, which was nude, was of great though severe beauty, butunfortunately the features had been injured by centuries of exposure tothe weather. Rising from either side of her head were the points of acrescent. The two male Colossi, on the contrary, were draped, andpresented a terrifying cast of features, especially the one to ourright, which had the face of a devil. That to our left was serene incountenance, but the calm upon it seemed dreadful. It was the calm ofthat inhuman cruelty, Sir Henry remarked, which the ancients attributedto beings potent for good, who could yet watch the sufferings ofhumanity, if not without rejoicing, at least without sorrow. Thesethree statues form a most awe-inspiring trinity, as they sit there intheir solitude, and gaze out across the plain for ever.
Contemplating these "Silent Ones," as the Kukuanas call them, anintense curiosity again seized us to know whose were the hands whichhad shaped them, who it was that had dug the pit and made the road.Whilst I was gazing and wondering, suddenly it occurred to me--beingfamiliar with the Old Testament--that Solomon went astray after strangegods, the names of three of whom I remembered--"Ashtoreth, the goddessof the Zidonians, Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, and Milcom, the godof the children of Ammon"--and I suggested to my companions that thefigures before us might represent these false and exploded divinities.
"Hum," said Sir Henry, who is a scholar, having taken a high degree inclassics at college, "there may be something in that; Ashtoreth of theHebrews was the Astarte of the Phoenicians, who were the great tradersof Solomon's time. Astarte, who afterwards became the Aphrodite of theGreeks, was represented with horns like the half-moon, and there on thebrow of the female figure are distinct horns. Perhaps these Colossiwere designed by some Phoenician official who managed the mines. Whocan say?"[1]
Before we had finished examining these extraordinary relics of remoteantiquity, Infadoos came up, and having saluted the "Silent Ones" bylifting his spear, asked us if we intended entering the "Place ofDeath" at once, or if we would wait till after we had taken food atmid-day. If we were ready to go at once, Gagool had announced herwillingness to guide us. As it was not later than eleveno'clock--driven to it by a burning curiosity--we announced ourintention of proceeding instantly, and I suggested that, in case weshould be detained in the cave, we should take some food with us.Accordingly Gagool's litter was brought up, and that lady herselfassisted out of it. Meanwhile Foulata, at my request, stored some"biltong," or dried game-flesh, together with a couple of gourds ofwater, in a reed basket with a hinged cover. Straight in front of us,at a distance of some fifty paces from the backs of the Colossi, rose asheer wall of rock, eighty feet or more in height, that graduallysloped upwards till it formed the base of the lofty snow-wreathed peak,which soared into the air three thousand feet above us. As soon as shewas clear of her hammock, Gagool cast one evil grin upon us, and then,leaning on a stick, hobbled off towards the face of this wall. Wefollowed her till we came to a narrow portal solidly arched that lookedlike the opening of a gallery of a mine.
Here Gagool was waiting for us, still with that evil grin upon herhorrid face.
"Now, white men from the Stars," she piped; "great warriors, Incubu,Bougwan, and Macumazahn the wise, are ye ready? Behold, I am here to dothe bidding of my lord the king, and to show you the store of brightstones. _Ha! ha! ha!_"
"We are ready," I said.
"Good, good! Make strong your hearts to bear what ye shall see. Comestthou too, Infadoos, thou who didst betray thy master?"
Infadoos frowned as he answered--
"Nay, I come not; it is not for me to enter there. But thou, Gagool,curb thy tongue, and beware
how thou dealest with my lords. At thyhands will I require them, and if a hair of them be hurt, Gagool, be'stthou fifty times a witch, thou shalt die. Hearest thou?"
"I hear Infadoos; I know thee, thou didst ever love big words; whenthou wast a babe I remember thou didst threaten thine own mother. Thatwas but the other day. But, fear not, fear not, I live only to do thebidding of the king. I have done the bidding of many kings, Infadoos,till in the end they did mine. _Ha! ha!_ I go to look upon their facesonce more, and Twala's also! Come on, come on, here is the lamp," andshe drew a large gourd full of oil, and fitted with a rush wick, fromunder her fur cloak.
"Art thou coming, Foulata?" asked Good in his villainous KitchenKukuana, in which he had been improving himself under that young lady'stuition.
"I fear, my lord," the girl answered timidly.
"Then give me the basket."
"Nay, my lord, whither thou goest there I go also."
"The deuce you will!" thought I to myself; "that may be rather awkwardif we ever get out of this."
Without further ado Gagool plunged into the passage, which was wideenough to admit of two walking abreast, and quite dark. We followed thesound of her voice as she piped to us to come on, in some fear andtrembling, which was not allayed by the flutter of a sudden rush ofwings.
"Hullo! what's that?" halloed Good; "somebody hit me in the face."
"Bats," said I; "on you go."
When, so far as we could judge, we had gone some fifty paces, weperceived that the passage was growing faintly light. Another minute,and we were in perhaps the most wonderful place that the eyes of livingman have beheld.
Let the reader picture to himself the hall of the vastest cathedral heever stood in, windowless indeed, but dimly lighted from above,presumably by shafts connected with the outer air and driven in theroof, which arched away a hundred feet above our heads, and he will getsome idea of the size of the enormous cave in which we found ourselves,with the difference that this cathedral designed by nature was loftierand wider than any built by man. But its stupendous size was the leastof the wonders of the place, for running in rows adown its length weregigantic pillars of what looked like ice, but were, in reality, hugestalactites. It is impossible for me to convey any idea of theoverpowering beauty and grandeur of these pillars of white spar, someof which were not less than twenty feet in diameter at the base, andsprang up in lofty and yet delicate beauty sheer to the distant roof.Others again were in process of formation. On the rock floor there wasin these cases what looked, Sir Henry said, exactly like a brokencolumn in an old Grecian temple, whilst high above, depending from theroof, the point of a huge icicle could be dimly seen.
Even as we gazed we could hear the process going on, for presently witha tiny splash a drop of water would fall from the far-off icicle on tothe column below. On some columns the drops only fell once in two orthree minutes, and in these cases it would be an interestingcalculation to discover how long, at that rate of dripping, it wouldtake to form a pillar, say eighty feet by ten in diameter. That theprocess, in at least one instance, was incalculably slow, the followingexample will suffice to show. Cut on one of these pillars we discoveredthe crude likeness of a mummy, by the head of which sat what appearedto be the figure of an Egyptian god, doubtless the handiwork of someold-world labourer in the mine. This work of art was executed at thenatural height at which an idle fellow, be he Phoenician workman orBritish cad, is in the habit of trying to immortalise himself at theexpense of nature's masterpieces, namely, about five feet from theground. Yet at the time that we saw it, which _must_ have been nearlythree thousand years after the date of the execution of the carving,the column was only eight feet high, and was still in process offormation, which gives a rate of growth of a foot to a thousand years,or an inch and a fraction to a century. This we knew because, as wewere standing by it, we heard a drop of water fall.
Sometimes the stalagmites took strange forms, presumably where thedropping of the water had not always been on the same spot. Thus, onehuge mass, which must have weighed a hundred tons or so, was in theshape of a pulpit, beautifully fretted over outside with a design thatlooked like lace. Others resembled strange beasts, and on the sides ofthe cave were fanlike ivory tracings, such as the frost leaves upon apane.
Out of the vast main aisle there opened here and there smaller caves,exactly, Sir Henry said, as chapels open out of great cathedrals. Somewere large, but one or two--and this is a wonderful instance of hownature carries out her handiwork by the same unvarying laws, utterlyirrespective of size--were tiny. One little nook, for instance, was nolarger than an unusually big doll's house, and yet it might have been amodel for the whole place, for the water dropped, tiny icicles hung,and spar columns were forming in just the same way.
We had not, however, enough time to examine this beautiful cavern sothoroughly as we should have liked to do, since unfortunately, Gagoolseemed to be indifferent as to stalactites, and only anxious to get herbusiness over. This annoyed me the more, as I was particularly anxiousto discover, if possible, by what system the light was admitted intothe cave, and whether it was by the hand of man or by that of naturethat this was done; also if the place had been used in any way inancient times, as seemed probable. However, we consoled ourselves withthe idea that we would investigate it thoroughly on our way back, andfollowed on at the heels of our uncanny guide.
On she led us, straight to the top of the vast and silent cave, wherewe found another doorway, not arched as the first was, but square atthe top, something like the doorways of Egyptian temples.
"Are ye prepared to enter the Place of Death, white men?" asked Gagool,evidently with a view to making us feel uncomfortable.
"Lead on, Macduff," said Good solemnly, trying to look as though he wasnot at all alarmed, as indeed we all did except Foulata, who caughtGood by the arm for protection.
"This is getting rather ghastly," said Sir Henry, peeping into the darkpassageway. "Come on, Quatermain--_seniores priores_. We mustn't keepthe old lady waiting!" and he politely made way for me to lead the van,for which inwardly I did not bless him.
_Tap, tap,_ went old Gagool's stick down the passage, as she trottedalong, chuckling hideously; and still overcome by some unaccountablepresentiment of evil, I hung back.
"Come, get on, old fellow," said Good, "or we shall lose our fairguide."
Thus adjured, I started down the passage, and after about twenty pacesfound myself in a gloomy apartment some forty feet long, by thirtybroad, and thirty high, which in some past age evidently had beenhollowed, by hand-labour, out of the mountain. This apartment was notnearly so well lighted as the vast stalactite ante-cave, and at thefirst glance all I could discern was a massive stone table running downits length, with a colossal white figure at its head, and life-sizedwhite figures all round it. Next I discovered a brown thing, seated onthe table in the centre, and in another moment my eyes grew accustomedto the light, and I saw what all these things were, and was tailing outof the place as hard as my legs could carry me.
I am not a nervous man in a general way, and very little troubled withsuperstitions, of which I have lived to see the folly; but I am free toown that this sight quite upset me, and had it not been that Sir Henrycaught me by the collar and held me, I do honestly believe that inanother five minutes I should have been outside the stalactite cave,and that a promise of all the diamonds in Kimberley would not haveinduced me to enter it again. But he held me tight, so I stoppedbecause I could not help myself. Next second, however, _his_ eyesbecame accustomed to the light, and he let go of me, and began to mopthe perspiration off his forehead. As for Good, he swore feebly, whileFoulata threw her arms round his neck and shrieked.
Only Gagool chuckled loud and long.
It _was_ a ghastly sight. There at the end of the long stone table,holding in his skeleton fingers a great white spear, sat _Death_himself, shaped in the form of a colossal human skeleton, fifteen feetor more in height. High above his head he held the spear, as though inthe act to strike; one bony
hand rested on the stone table before him,in the position a man assumes on rising from his seat, whilst his framewas bent forward so that the vertebrae of the neck and the grinning,gleaming skull projected towards us, and fixed its hollow eye-placesupon us, the jaws a little open, as though it were about to speak.
"Great heavens!" said I faintly, at last, "what can it be?"
"And what are _those things_?" asked Good, pointing to the whitecompany round the table.
"And what on earth is _that thing_?" said Sir Henry, pointing to thebrown creature seated on the table.
"_Hee! hee! hee!_" laughed Gagool. "To those who enter the Hall of theDead, evil comes. _Hee! hee! hee! ha! ha!_"
"Come, Incubu, brave in battle, come and see him thou slewest;" and theold creature caught Curtis' coat in her skinny fingers, and led himaway towards the table. We followed.
Presently she stopped and pointed at the brown object seated on thetable. Sir Henry looked, and started back with an exclamation; and nowonder, for there, quite naked, the head which Curtis' battle-axe hadshorn from the body resting on its knees, was the gaunt corpse ofTwala, the last king of the Kukuanas. Yes, there, the head perched uponthe knees, it sat in all its ugliness, the vertebrae projecting a fullinch above the level of the shrunken flesh of the neck, for all theworld like a black double of Hamilton Tighe.[2] Over the surface of thecorpse there was gathered a thin glassy film, that made its appearanceyet more appalling, for which we were, at the moment, quite unable toaccount, till presently we observed that from the roof of the chamberthe water fell steadily, _drip! drop! drip!_ on to the neck of thecorpse, whence it ran down over the entire surface, and finally escapedinto the rock through a tiny hole in the table. Then I guessed what thefilm was--_Twala's body was being transformed into a stalactite._
A look at the white forms seated on the stone bench which ran roundthat ghastly board confirmed this view. They were human bodies indeed,or rather they had been human; now they were _stalactites_. This wasthe way in which the Kukuana people had from time immemorial preservedtheir royal dead. They petrified them. What the exact system might be,if there was any, beyond the placing of them for a long period of yearsunder the drip, I never discovered, but there they sat, iced over andpreserved for ever by the siliceous fluid.
Anything more awe-inspiring than the spectacle of this long line ofdeparted royalties (there were twenty-seven of them, the last beingIgnosi's father), wrapped, each of them, in a shroud of ice-like spar,through which the features could be dimly discovered, and seated roundthat inhospitable board, with Death himself for a host, it isimpossible to imagine. That the practice of thus preserving their kingsmust have been an ancient one is evident from the number, which,allowing for an average reign of fifteen years, supposing that everyking who reigned was placed here--an improbable thing, as some are sureto have perished in battle far from home--would fix the date of itscommencement at four and a quarter centuries back.
But the colossal Death, who sits at the head of the board, is far olderthan that, and, unless I am much mistaken, owes his origin to the sameartist who designed the three Colossi. He is hewn out of a singlestalactite, and, looked at as a work of art, is most admirablyconceived and executed. Good, who understands such things, declaredthat, so far as he could see, the anatomical design of the skeleton isperfect down to the smallest bones.
My own idea is, that this terrific object was a freak of fancy on thepart of some old-world sculptor, and that its presence had suggested tothe Kukuanas the idea of placing their royal dead under its awfulpresidency. Or perhaps it was set there to frighten away any marauderswho might have designs upon the treasure chamber beyond. I cannot say.All I can do is to describe it as it is, and the reader must form hisown conclusion.
Such, at any rate, was the White Death and such were the White Dead!
[1] Compare Milton, "Paradise Lost," Book i.:--
"With these in troop Came Ashtoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horns; To whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs."
[2] "Now haste ye, my handmaidens, haste and see How he sits there and glowers with his head on his knee."