第54章 CHAPTER XI(4)

Vernoon, five centuries have gone by since an Asika was really wed to a foreign man who wore a green turban and called himself a son of the Prophet, a man with a hooked nose and flashing eyes, who reviled our gods until they slew him, even though he was the beloved of their priestess. She who went before me also would have married that white man whose face was like your face, but he fled with Little Bonsa, or rather Little Bonsa fled with him. So she passed away unwed, and in her place I came."

"How did you come, if she whom you call your mother was not your mother?" asked Alan.

"What is that to you, white man?" she replied haughtily. "I am here, as my spirit has been here from the first. Oh! I see you think I lie to you, come then, come, and I will show you those who from the beginning have been the husbands of the Asika," and rising from her chair she took him by the hand.

They went through doors and by long, half-lit passages till they came to great gates guarded by old priests armed with spears. As they drew near to these priests the Asika loosed a scarf that she wore over her breast-plate of gold fish scales, and threw the star-spangled thing over Alan's head, that even these priests should not see his face.

Then she spoke a word to them and they opened the gates. Here Jeekie evinced a disposition to remain, remarking to his master that he thought that place, into which he had never entered, "much too holy for poor nigger like him."

The Asika asked him what he had said and he explained his sense of unworthiness in her own tongue.

"Come, fellow," she exclaimed, "to translate my words and to bear witness that no trick is played upon your lord."

Still Jeekie lingered bashfully, whereon at a sign from her one of the priests pricked him behind with his great spear, and uttering a low howl he sprang forward.

The Asika led the way down a passage, which they saw ended in a big hall lit with lamps. Now they were in it and Alan became aware that they had entered the treasure house of the Asiki, since here were piled up great heaps of gold, gold in ingots, gold in nuggets, in stone jars filled with dust, in vessels plain or embossed with monstrous shapes in fetishes and in little squares and discs that looked as though they had served as coins. Never had he seen so much gold before.

"You are rich here, Lady," he said, gazing at the piles astonished.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Yes, as I have heard that some people count wealth. These are the offerings brought to our gods from the beginning; also all the gold found in the mountains belongs to the gods, and there is much of it there. The gift I sent to you was taken from this heap, but in truth it is but a poor gift, seeing that although this stuff is bright and serves for cups and other things, it has no use at all and is only offered to the gods because it is harder to come by than other metals. Look, these are prettier than the gold," and from a stone table she picked up at hazard a long necklace of large, uncut stones, red and white in colour and set alternatively, that Alan judged to be crystals and spinels.

"Take it," she said, "and examine it at your leisure. It is very old.

For hundreds of years no more of these necklaces have been made," and with a careless movement she threw the chain over his head so that it hung upon his shoulders.

Alan thanked her, then remembered that the man called Mungana, who was the husband, real or official, of this priestess, had been somewhat similarly adorned, and shivered a little as though at a presage of advancing fate. Still he did not return the thing, fearing lest he should give offence.

At this moment his attention was taken from the treasure by the sound of a groan behind him. Turning round he perceived Jeekie, his great eyes rolling as though in an extremity of fear.

"Oh my golly! Major," he ejaculated, pointing to the wall, "look there."

Alan looked, but at first in that dim light could only discover long rows of gleaming objects which reached from the floor to the roof.

"Come and see," said the Asika, and taking a lamp from that table on which lay the gems, she led him past the piles of gold to one side of the vault or hall. Then he saw, and although he did not show it, like Jeekie he was afraid.

For there, each in his own niche and standing one above the other, were what looked like hundreds of golden men with gleaming eyes. At first until the utter stillness undeceived him, he thought that they /must/ be men. Then he understood that this was what they had been; now they were corpses wrapped in sheets of thin gold and wearing golden masks with eyes of crystal, each mask being beaten out to a hideous representation of the man in life.