Queen!" I hastened to assure her. "Thineally, if thou wilt."
"I have brought hither this man," she cried, "I have brought him hitherin fulfilment of my oath in order that punishment shall be meted out tohim."
"Punishment!" I gasped, wondering if I had taken leave of my senses.
"Remember, that this man is Ahamadou, chief of the pirates, who havecaptured so many of our caravans, and who slew my son Kourra, heir tothis my throne, six moons ago!" she cried, in a paroxysm of rage,lifting her thin bare arms, her face growing hideous in her fearfulebullition of anger. I saw that I had fallen helplessly into the handsof my enemies, and bit my lip without uttering a single word. To escapefrom that unexplored rock-bound kingdom was hopeless. I could only showthem that fear dwelleth not in the heart of an Azjar, even thoughthousands lifted their hands against him.
"I have," she cried, "sought out this man, alone and unaided, accordingto the oath I took before the sacred scarabaeus upon this the Throne ofthe Thousand Eyes, and conducted him hither in order that ye may passjudgment upon him. Speak, say what torture shall he undergo?"
In an instant the air was rent by loud cries of--
"Let the scarabaeus devour him! Let him witness the torture of thespies, and afterwards let the same be applied to him! Let him die themost terrible of all deaths; let the sacred beetle crush him beneath itsfangs!"
A dozen men, aged, white-robed, with beards so long that some almostswept the ground, whom I judged were priests, held brief consultation:then, amid the uproar, they seized me, wrenched from me my arms, and ledme away ere I could raise my voice to charge their dreaded ruler withtreachery. Followed by the jeering, excited multitude, they conductedme along the wide level road to the mysterious city, upon the high gatesof which were mounted strong guards, with breast-plates whereon theimage of the sacred beetle was worked in crimson, and through greatstreets and squares until we came to a huge mosquelike structure, thethree golden domes of which I had noticed glittering afar as the dyingrays of the sunset slanted upon them.
The dimly-lit interior was magnificent, but as they dragged me forward,I saw placed beneath the central dome a colossal figure of the sacredScarabaeus a hundred feet in height, and two hundred feet square, platedover with gold. From the two hideous eyes shone lines of white lightlike the rays of the searchlights of the Infidels, while, by somemechanical contrivance, the wide mouth now and then opened and closed,as though the monstrous emblem of the eternal were eager to devour thosewho worshipped before it.
The bearded priests who held me threw themselves upon their knees beforeit in adoration, uttering a low kind of chant, while almost at the sameinstant a quivering terrified man, haggard, thin, and bearing signs oflong imprisonment, was dragged forth from a kind of cell in the colossalwalls, and made to bend upon his knees upon a grey circular stoneimmediately before the monster Throat of Death.
"No! no!" he shrieked in horror. "Kill me by the sword! Let my body begiven to the alligators--anything--but spare me the torture of theBeetle! I am innocent! It is but Nara's love of bloodshed and tortureof the flesh that hath caused her to condemn me. May the curse of theBeetle be ever upon her!"
Ere he could utter another word six black slaves, veritable giants instature, seized the unfortunate wretch, and as the mouth of the monsteragain opened, they flung him headlong into it.
Next second the cruel terrible mouth closed, and the shrieks andcrushing of bones told how terrible was the torture of the human victimwithin its insatiable maw.
The sight caused me to shudder. To this frightful ignominious death hadthis fair-faced, soft-spoken woman condemned me.
Again the enormous golden jaws opened, and again, as they closed, thevictim's piercing shrieks told that his agony was renewed, and thatdeath did not come quickly within that weird colossal figure of theinsect, once held sacred from the shores of the Red Sea unto the greatblack ocean. In this, the last place in all the world where its worshipstill remained, the people were the most cruel and relentless of any inour great dark continent, Africa. A dozen times the mouth opened andclosed, and each occasion the cries of the agonised man were frightfulto hear, until at last they died away, and as they did so the light alsodied from the monster's eyes.
Soon, however, another thin, cringing man, starved almost to a skeleton,was brought forth, and with similar scant ceremony was cast into thecolossal jaws, whereupon the light in the giant eyes grew brilliantagain, and the shrieks for release, as the mouth reopened, were onlyanswered by the loud jeers of the assembled multitude, by this timeincreased until every part of the magnificent building was crowded tosuffocation, while at that instant Nara, still upon the Throne of theThousand Eyes, was dragged in by a crowd of nearly a thousand persons.Twelve black slaves slowly fanned her as she sat, her chin resting uponher hand, watching in silence.
One after another were victims brought forth and hurled to the horriblemonster, to be slowly cut to pieces by the myriad gleaming knives andfine-edged saws set within those terrible jaws, until at last some onein the crowd cried out with a loud voice--
"Let the pirate Ahamadou die! His men killed our Prince, the valiantKourra, therefore no mercy shall be shown the Veiled Man. Let him begiven to the Sacred Beetle!"
In an instant the cry was taken up on every hand. "Let him die!" theyshouted wildly. "Let us witness his body being cut to ribbons!"
The priests hesitated, while in that perilous moment I repeated a_sura_, and heeded not these Infidel worshippers of insects andidolators of golden effigies.
But at a sign from Nara, the relentless figure in white seated upon herwondrous Throne of the Thousand Eyes, they seized me, forced me to kneelupon the circular stone, and then, as those hideous jaws opened with aswift movement, they lifted me and cast me in.
For an instant my head reeled, and all breath left me, for I knew that afearful agonising death was nigh; but as Allah willed it, I alightedupon my feet, and finding in the darkness that the floor sloped down, Istarted running with all my might, gashing myself upon the knives, setupright like teeth, but nevertheless speedily forward, heedless of thepain. Slowly and surely the walls of that strange torture-chamberclosed about me with a creaking and groaning horrible to hear, until Ifound myself squeezed tightly with irresistible force on every side. Iheld my breath, for upon my chest was a great weight, and I knew thatnext instant my frame must be crushed to pulp.
Slowly, however, almost imperceptibly, the frightful pressure upon mybody began to relax, and ere I realised the welcome truth, I foundmyself able to breathe again. By dashing forward I had advanced fardown the dreaded Throat of Death to a point where the passage began towiden, and by the freshness of the air I now felt that some outlet laybeyond. Therefore, without hesitation, I sped again onward, stumblingover some soft objects on the ground, which I instinctively knew to bethe remains of my fellow victims, until a faint grey glimmer of lightshowed in the distance. The floor still sloped steeply, and by feelingabout me, I discovered that the Throat was now simply a natural burrowin the rock.
Without loss of a second I soon gained the outlet, and peered forth,aghast to discover that the tunnel ended abruptly in the face of a bareprecipice; and that in the valley some two hundred feet below lay agreat heap of sun-bleached bones, the remains of those who had passedthrough the Throat of Death. Undoubtedly, when the channel becamechoked with the rotting remains of the victims they were cast forth tothe vultures and the wolves.
Eager to escape from the noisome place, I climbed with difficulty downthe face of the mountain, and on gaining the valley, quickly recognised,with satisfaction, that I was actually beyond the confines of theaccursed Land of Akkar. Truly I had encountered death as a very nearneighbour. The high range with their snowy crests were the same as mytreacherous guide had pointed out to me, and next day I skirted the lakewhich, emptying itself by the subterranean river, gave entrance to themystic land of Nara. Through many weary weeks I travelled hither andthither, ill and half-starved, until at length I fell
in with a camelcaravan, and travelling with them to Ideles, subsequently rejoined myown tribesmen, who had, by that time, begun to despair of my safety.
Within six moons I made a report of the mysterious land, and all that Ihad witnessed therein, to the Bureau Arabe, in Algiers, and ere six moremoons had waned, the Franks sent an armed expedition to enter andexplore the country. Of this expedition I was appointed guide, all pastoffences of my tribesmen being forgiven; but the soldiers of Naraoffering a determined resistance, their country was at once subdued andoccupied by the white conquerors. The sacred Scarabaeus was destroyedby dynamite, and the Throat of Death widened until it now forms one ofthe entrances to the land so long unknown. The dreaded Nara was sent asprisoner down to Senegal, where she still lives in exile; but herwondrous throne still remains in her great white palace--now a barrackof the Spahis and Chasseurs--and the Arab story-tellers in every