Chapter XIX: “give Me a Black Goat!”

The conversation after this was of such a desultory order that I do not quite recollect it. For some reason, perhaps from a desire to keep her identity and character in reserve, Ayesha did not talk freely, as she usually did. Presently, however, she informed Leo that she had arranged a dance that night for our amusement. I was astonished to hear this, as I fancied that the Amahagger were much too gloomy a folk to indulge in any such frivolity; but, as will presently more clearly appear, it turned out that an Amahagger dance has little in common with such fantastic festivities in other countries, savage or civilised. Then, as we were about to withdraw, she suggested that Leo might like to see some of the wonders of the caves, and as he gladly assented thither we departed, accompanied by Job and Billali. To describe our visit would only be to repeat a great deal of what I have already said. The tombs we entered were indeed different, for the whole rock was a honeycomb of sepulchres,[1] but the contents were nearly always similar. Afterwards we visited the pyramid of bones that had haunted my dreams on the previous night, and from thence went down a long passage to one of the great vaults occupied by the bodies of the poorer citizens of Imperial Kôr. These bodies were not nearly so well preserved as were those of the wealthier classes. Many of them had no linen covering on them, also they were buried from five hundred to one thousand in a single large vault, the corpses in some instances being thickly piled one upon another, like a heap of slain.

[1] For a long while it puzzled me to know what could have been done with the enormous quantities of rock that must have been dug out of these vast caves; but I afterwards discovered that it was for the most part built into the walls and palaces of Kôr, and also used to line the reservoirs and sewers.—L. H. H.

Leo was of course intensely interested in this stupendous and
unequalled sight, which was, indeed, enough to awake all the
imagination a man had in him into the most active life. But to
poor Job it did not prove attractive. His nerves—already
seriously shaken by what he had undergone since we had arrived in
this terrible country—were, as may be imagined, still further
disturbed by the spectacle of these masses of departed humanity,
whereof the forms still remained perfect before his eyes, though
their voices were for ever lost in the eternal silence of the
tomb. Nor was he comforted when old Billali, by way of soothing
his evident agitation, informed him that he should not be
frightened of these dead things, as he would soon be like them
himself.

“There’s a nice thing to say of a man, sir,” he ejaculated, when
I translated this little remark; “but there, what can one expect
of an old man-eating savage? Not but what I dare say he’s right,”
and Job sighed.

When we had finished inspecting the caves, we returned and had
our meal, for it was now past four in the afternoon, and we
all—especially Leo—needed some food and rest. At six o’clock we,
together with Job, waited on Ayesha, who set to work to terrify
our poor servant still further by showing him pictures on the
pool of water in the font-like vessel. She learnt from me that he
was one of seventeen children, and then bid him think of all his
brothers and sisters, or as many of them as he could, gathered
together in his father’s cottage. Then she told him to look in
the water, and there, reflected from its stilly surface, was that
dead scene of many years gone by, as it was recalled to our
retainer’s brain. Some of the faces were clear enough, but some
were mere blurs and splotches, or with one feature grossly
exaggerated; the fact being that, in these instances, Job had
been unable to recall the exact appearances of the individuals,
or remembered them only by a peculiarity of his tribe, and the
water could only reflect what he saw with his mind’s eye. For it
must be remembered that _She’s_ power in this matter was strictly
limited; she could apparently, except in very rare instances,
only photograph upon the water what was actually in the mind of
some one present, and then only by his will. But, if she was
personally acquainted with a locality, she could, as in the case
of ourselves and the whale-boat, throw its reflection upon the
water, and also, it seems, the reflection of anything extraneous
that was passing there at the time. This power, however, did not
extend to the minds of others. For instance, she could show me
the interior of my college chapel, as I remembered it, but not as
it was at the moment of reflection; for, where other people were
concerned, her art was strictly limited to the facts or memories
present to _their_ consciousness at the moment. So much was this
so that when we tried, for her amusement, to show her pictures of
noted buildings, such as St. Paul’s or the Houses of Parliament,
the result was most imperfect; for, of course, though we had a
good general idea of their appearance, we could not recall all
the architectural details, and therefore the minutiæ necessary to
a perfect reflection were wanting. But Job could not be got to
understand this, and, so far from accepting a natural explanation
of the matter, which was after all, though strange enough in all
conscience, nothing more than an instance of glorified and
perfected telepathy, he set the whole thing down as a
manifestation of the blackest magic. I shall never forget the
howl of terror which he uttered when he saw the more or less
perfect portraits of his long-scattered brethren staring at him
from the quiet water, or the merry peal of laughter with which
Ayesha greeted his consternation. As for Leo, he did not
altogether like it either, but ran his fingers through his yellow
curls, and remarked that it gave him the creeps.

After about an hour of this amusement, in the latter part of
which Job did _not_ participate, the mutes by signs indicated
that Billali was waiting for an audience. Accordingly he was told
to “crawl up,” which he did as awkwardly as usual, and announced
that the dance was ready to begin if _She_ and the white
strangers would be pleased to attend. Shortly afterwards we all
rose, and, Ayesha having thrown a dark cloak (the same, by the
way, that she had worn when I saw her cursing by the fire) over
her white wrappings, we started. The dance was to be held in the
open air, on the smooth rocky plateau in front of the great cave,
and thither we made our way. About fifteen paces from the mouth
of the cave we found three chairs placed, and here we sat and
waited, for as yet no dancers were to be seen. The night was
almost, but not quite, dark, the moon not having risen as yet,
which made us wonder how we should be able to see the dancing.

“Thou wilt presently understand,” said Ayesha, with a little
laugh, when Leo asked her; and we certainly did. Scarcely were
the words out of her mouth when from every point we saw dark
forms rushing up, each bearing with him what we at first took to
be an enormous flaming torch. Whatever they were, they were
burning furiously, for the flames stood out a yard or more behind
each bearer. On they came, fifty or more of them, carrying their
flaming burdens and looking like so many devils from hell. Leo
was the first to discover what these burdens were.

“Great heaven!” he said, “they are corpses on fire!”

I stared and stared again—he was perfectly right—the torches that
were to light our entertainment were human mummies from the
caves!

On rushed the bearers of the flaming corpses, and, meeting at a
spot about twenty paces in front of us, built their ghastly
burdens crossways into a huge bonfire. Heavens! how they roared
and flared! No tar barrel could have burnt as those mummies did.
Nor was this all. Suddenly I saw one great fellow seize a flaming
human arm that had fallen from its parent frame, and rush off
into the darkness. Presently he stopped, and a tall streak of
fire shot up into the air, illumining the gloom, and also the
lamp from which it sprang. That lamp was the mummy of a woman
tied to a stout stake let into the rock, and he had fired her
hair. On he went a few paces and touched a second, then a third,
and a fourth, till at last we were surrounded on all three sides
by a great ring of bodies flaring furiously, the material with
which they were preserved having rendered them so inflammable
that the flames would literally spout out of the ears and mouth
in tongues of fire a foot or more in length.

Nero illuminated his gardens with live Christians soaked in tar,
and we were now treated to a similar spectacle, probably for the
first time since his day, only happily our lamps were not living
ones.

But, although this element of horror was fortunately wanting, to
describe the awful and hideous grandeur of the spectacle thus
presented to us is, I feel, so absolutely beyond my poor powers
that I scarcely dare attempt it. To begin with, it appealed to
the moral as well as the physical susceptibilities. There was
something very terrible, and yet very fascinating, about the
employment of the remote dead to illumine the orgies of the
living; in itself the thing was a satire, both on the living and
the dead. Cæsar’s dust—or is it Alexander’s?—may stop a bunghole,
but the functions of these dead Cæsars of the past was to light
up a savage fetish dance. To such base uses may we come, of so
little account may we be in the minds of the eager multitudes
that we shall breed, many of whom, so far from revering our
memory, will live to curse us for begetting them into such a
world of woe.

Then there was the physical side of the spectacle, and a weird
and splendid one it was. Those old citizens of Kôr burnt as, to
judge from their sculptures and inscriptions, they had lived,
very fast, and with the utmost liberality. What is more, there
were plenty of them. As soon as ever a mummy had burnt down to
the ankles, which it did in about twenty minutes, the feet were
kicked away, and another one put in its place. The bonfire was
kept going on the same generous scale, and its flames shot up,
with a hiss and a crackle, twenty or thirty feet into the air,
throwing great flashes of light far out into the gloom, through
which the dark forms of the Amahagger flitted to and fro like
devils replenishing the infernal fires. We all stood and stared
aghast—shocked, and yet fascinated at so strange a spectacle, and
half expecting to see the spirits those flaming forms had once
enclosed come creeping from the shadows to work vengeance on
their desecrators.

“I promised thee a strange sight, my Holly,” laughed Ayesha,
whose nerves alone did not seem to be affected; “and, behold, I
have not failed thee. Also, it hath its lesson. Trust not to the
future, for who knows what the future may bring! Therefore, live
for the day, and endeavour not to escape the dust which seems to
be man’s end. What thinkest thou those long-forgotten nobles and
ladies would have felt had they known that they should one day
flare to light the dance or boil the pot of savages? But see,
here come the dancers; a merry crew—are they not? The stage is
lit—now for the play.”

As she spoke, we perceived two lines of figures, one male and the
other female, to the number of about a hundred, each advancing
round the human bonfire, arrayed only in the usual leopard and
buck skins. They formed up, in perfect silence, in two lines,
facing each other between us and the fire, and then the dance—a
sort of infernal and fiendish cancan—began. To describe it is
quite impossible, but, though there was a good deal of tossing of
legs and double-shuffling, it seemed to our untutored minds to be
more of a play than a dance, and, as usual with this dreadful
people, whose minds seem to have taken their colour from the
caves in which they live, and whose jokes and amusements are
drawn from the inexhaustible stores of preserved mortality with
which they share their homes, the subject appeared to be a most
ghastly one. I know that it represented an attempted murder first
of all, and then the burial alive of the victim and his
struggling from the grave; each act of the abominable drama,
which was carried on in perfect silence, being rounded off and
finished with a furious and most revolting dance round the
supposed victim, who writhed upon the ground in the red light of
the bonfire.

Presently, however, this pleasing piece was interrupted. Suddenly
there was a slight commotion, and a large powerful woman, whom I
had noted as one of the most vigorous of the dancers, came, made
mad and drunken with unholy excitement, bounding and staggering
towards us, shrieking out as she came:—

“I want a Black Goat, I must have a Black Goat, bring me a Black
Goat!” and down she fell upon the rocky floor foaming and
writhing, and shrieking for a Black Goat, about as hideous a
spectacle as can well be conceived.

Instantly most of the dancers came up and got round her, though
some still continued their capers in the background.

“She has got a Devil,” called out one of them. “Run and get a
black goat. There, Devil, keep quiet! keep quiet! You shall have
the goat presently. They have gone to fetch it, Devil.”

“I want a Black Goat, I must have a Black Goat!” shrieked the
foaming rolling creature again.

“All right, Devil, the goat will be here presently; keep quiet,
there’s a good Devil!”

And so on till the goat, taken from a neighbouring kraal, did at
last arrive, being dragged bleating on to the scene by its horns.

“Is it a Black One, is it a Black One?” shrieked the possessed.

“Yes, yes, Devil, as black as night;” then aside, “keep it behind
thee, don’t let the Devil see that it has got a white spot on its
rump and another on its belly. In one minute, Devil. There, cut
his throat quick. Where is the saucer?”

“The Goat! the Goat! the Goat! Give me the blood of my black
goat! I must have it, don’t you see I must have it? Oh! oh! oh!
give me the blood of the goat.”

At this moment a terrified _bah!_ announced that the poor goat
had been sacrificed, and the next minute a woman ran up with a
saucer full of blood. This the possessed creature, who was then
raving and foaming her wildest, seized and _drank_, and was
instantly recovered, and without a trace of hysteria, or fits, or
being possessed, or whatever dreadful thing it was she was
suffering from. She stretched her arms, smiled faintly, and
walked quietly back to the dancers, who presently withdrew in a
double line as they had come, leaving the space between us and
the bonfire deserted.

I thought that the entertainment was now over, and, feeling
rather queer, was about to ask _She_ if we could rise, when
suddenly what at first I took to be a baboon came hopping round
the fire, and was instantly met upon the other side by a lion, or
rather a human being dressed in a lion’s skin. Then came a goat,
then a man wrapped in an ox’s hide, with the horns wobbling about
in a ludicrous way. After him followed a blesbok, then an impala,
then a koodoo, then more goats, and many other animals, including
a girl sewn up in the shining scaly hide of a boa-constrictor,
several yards of which trailed along the ground behind her. When
all the beasts had collected they began to dance about in a
lumbering, unnatural fashion, and to imitate the sounds produced
by the respective animals they represented, till the whole air
was alive with roars and bleating and the hissing of snakes. This
went on for a long time, till, getting tired of the pantomime, I
asked Ayesha if there would be any objection to Leo and myself
walking round to inspect the human torches, and, as she had
nothing to say against it, we started, striking round to the
left. After looking at one or two of the flaming bodies, we were
about to return, thoroughly disgusted with the grotesque
weirdness of the spectacle, when our attention was attracted by
one of the dancers, a particularly active leopard, that had
separated itself from its fellow-beasts, and was whisking about
in our immediate neighbourhood, but gradually drawing into a spot
where the shadow was darkest, equidistant between two of the
flaming mummies. Drawn by curiosity, we followed it, when
suddenly it darted past us into the shadows beyond, and as it did
so erected itself and whispered, “Come,” in a voice that we both
recognised as that of Ustane. Without waiting to consult me Leo
turned and followed her into the outer darkness, and I, feeling
sick enough at heart, went after them. The leopard crawled on for
about fifty paces—a sufficient distance to be quite beyond the
light of the fire and torches—and then Leo came up with it, or,
rather, with Ustane.

“Oh, my lord,” I heard her whisper, “so I have found thee!
Listen. I am in peril of my life from ‘_She-who-must-be-obeyed_.’
Surely the Baboon has told thee how she drove me from thee? I
love thee, my lord, and thou art mine according to the custom of
the country. I saved thy life! My Lion, wilt thou cast me off
now?”

“Of course not,” ejaculated Leo; “I have been wondering whither
thou hadst gone. Let us go and explain matters to the Queen.”

“Nay, nay, she would slay us. Thou knowest not her power—the
Baboon there, he knoweth, for he saw. Nay, there is but one way:
if thou wilt cleave to me, thou must flee with me across the
marshes even now, and then perchance we may escape.”

“For Heaven’s sake, Leo,” I began, but she broke in—

“Nay, listen not to him. Swift—be swift—death is in the air we
breathe. Even now, mayhap, _She_ heareth us,” and without more
ado she proceeded to back her arguments by throwing herself into
his arms. As she did so the leopard’s head slipped from her hair,
and I saw the three white finger-marks upon it, gleaming faintly
in the starlight. Once more realising the desperate nature of the
position, I was about to interpose, for I knew that Leo was not
too strong-minded where women were concerned, when—oh! horror!—I
heard a little silvery laugh behind me. I turned round, and there
was _She_ herself, and with her Billali and two male mutes. I
gasped and nearly sank to the ground, for I knew that such a
situation must result in some dreadful tragedy, of which it
seemed exceedingly probable to me that I should be the first
victim. As for Ustane, she untwined her arms and covered her eyes
with her hands, while Leo, not knowing the full terror of the
position, merely covered up, and looked as foolish as a man
caught in such a trap would naturally do.