|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 90
I am not a nervous man in a general way, and very little troubled with
superstitions, of which I have lived to see the folly; but I am free
to own that this sight quite upset me, and had it not been that Sir
Henry caught me by the collar and held me, I do honestly believe that
in another five minutes I should have been outside the stalactite
cave, and that a promise of all the diamonds in Kimberley would not
have induced me to enter it again. But he held me tight, so I stopped
because I could not help myself. Next second, however, /his/ eyes
became accustomed to the light, and he let go of me, and began to mop
the perspiration off his forehead. As for Good, he swore feebly, while
Foulata 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 feet
or more in height. High above his head he held the spear, as though in
the 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
frame was bent forward so that the vertebr� of the neck and the
grinning, gleaming skull projected towards us, and fixed its hollow
eye-places upon 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 white
company round the table.
"And what on earth is /that thing/?" said Sir Henry, pointing to the
brown creature seated on the table.
"/Hee! hee! hee!/" laughed Gagool. "To those who enter the Hall of the
Dead, evil comes. /Hee! hee! hee! ha! ha!/"
"Come, Incubu, brave in battle, come and see him thou slewest;" and
the old creature caught Curtis' coat in her skinny fingers, and led
him away towards the table. We followed.
Presently she stopped and pointed at the brown object seated on the
table. Sir Henry looked, and started back with an exclamation; and no
wonder, for there, quite naked, the head which Curtis' battle-axe had
shorn from the body resting on its knees, was the gaunt corpse of
Twala, the last king of the Kukuanas. Yes, there, the head perched
upon the knees, it sat in all its ugliness, the vertebr� projecting a
full inch above the level of the shrunken flesh of the neck, for all
the world like a black double of Hamilton Tighe.[*] Over the surface
of the corpse there was gathered a thin glassy film, that made its
appearance yet more appalling, for which we were, at the moment, quite
unable to account, till presently we observed that from the roof of
the chamber the water fell steadily, /drip! drop! drip!/ on to the
neck of the corpse, whence it ran down over the entire surface, and
finally escaped into the rock through a tiny hole in the table. Then I
guessed what the film was--/Twala's body was being transformed into a
stalactite./
[*] "Now haste ye, my handmaidens, haste and see
How he sits there and glowers with his head on his knee."
A look at the white forms seated on the stone bench which ran round
that ghastly board confirmed this view. They were human bodies indeed,
or rather they had been human; now they were /stalactites/. This was
the way in which the Kukuana people had from time immemorial preserved
their 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
years under the drip, I never discovered, but there they sat, iced
over and preserved for ever by the siliceous fluid.
Anything more awe-inspiring than the spectacle of this long line of
departed royalties (there were twenty-seven of them, the last being
Ignosi's father), wrapped, each of them, in a shroud of ice-like spar,
through which the features could be dimly discovered, and seated round
that inhospitable board, with Death himself for a host, it is
impossible to imagine. That the practice of thus preserving their
kings must have been an ancient one is evident from the number, which,
allowing for an average reign of fifteen years, supposing that every
king who reigned was placed here--an improbable thing, as some are
sure to have perished in battle far from home--would fix the date of
its commencement at four and a quarter centuries back.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|