The Veiled Man

The water glittering beneath the torch’s uncertain rays, flowed past so swiftly, that we were compelled to continue pulling in order to remain abreast of the idol. Long and earnestly we both searched to find some means by which we could reach the two holes that formed the idol’s eyes; yet they seemed so small that it was questionable whether, even if we successfully clambered up the sculptured face, we could squeeze our bodies through. A dozen times we allowed the canoe to drift past, while I endeavoured to discover some means by which to reach those glaring eyes. But the bright sunlight dazzled us, and beyond the tiny niches filled with jewels there was no other inequality to serve as foothold to gain the narrow ledge which formed the lips. Again, if I made a false step I should be instantly swept away by the swirling current, and lost for ever in the dark whirling flood.

At length however my companion, muscular and agile, succeeded in springing clear of the canoe and gripping one of the small niches, tossing the jewels into the water by his frantic efforts. For an instant he struggled, his legs dangling in mid-air; then presently his toes found foothold, and he commenced slowly to clamber up the chin of the gigantic visage towards a kind of long ledge. I watched his progress breathlessly, not daring to utter a word, but keeping the canoe in readiness to row after him if he fell. With difficulty he ascended, clinging on to the face of the rock until he reached the great grinning mouth and stood up facing me.

“What do you find?” I shouted, my voice echoing weirdly. I had noticed that as he glanced along the spot where he stood his face became transfixed by horror.

“Follow me!” he replied hoarsely. “Have a care, a single false step means death.”

At that instant the boat was passing the spot where he had gripped the rock’s face, and without hesitation I followed his example and sprang, clutching the narrow slippery ledge with both hands. My feet found a resting-place, yet next second a thought which crossed my mind held me appalled. I had omitted to moor the boat.

Over my shoulder I throw a hasty glance. It had already drifted out of sight.

I heard my white companion shouting, but taking no heed toiled on up the great face until a strong helping hand gripped mine, and I found myself standing beside him upon the narrow ledge forming the lips of the hideous countenance.

Next instant, glancing round, my eyes encountered a sight which hold me petrified.

A long dark aperture, about the height of myself, formed the mouth, and set therein were broad sharp teeth of rusted sword-blades, which overlapping, prevented entrance to the cavernous throat. Twenty blades were set in the jaw above and twenty below, forming an impassable barrier of razor-edged spikes. Our only means of escape being cut off by the drifting of the canoe, one fact alone remained to give us courage. From where we stood we recognised the utter impossibility of passing through, the eyes of the colossus, yet, as together we looked at the formidable teeth, we saw a human skeleton lying beneath them. The skull was beyond the row of blades, the legs towards us, proving that some means existed by which those jaws could be opened. The unfortunate man had, apparently, been impaled by the descending blades while in the act of escaping.

After brief consultation we began an active search to discover the means by which the mouth could be opened. What lay beyond in that dark cavernous throat we knew not, though we strained our eyes into the blackness, and shook the sharp steel spikes in a vain endeavour to loosen them. For a full hour we searched, discovering nothing to lead us to any solution of the problem. That freedom lay beyond we felt convinced, by reason of the light and air from above; but whatever were the means employed to raise the deadly jaw they were a secret. Time after time we examined every nook and crevice minutely, until at last, when just about to give up our search as futile, I suddenly espied, projecting from the river’s surface, a short bar of iron, with the appearance of a lever.

To reach it was imperative, therefore at imminent risk I let myself carefully over the edge of the rock, slowly lowering my body until I could grip it. Beneath my weight it slowly gave way, and next instant there was a loud gurgling as of water drawn in by a vacuum, followed immediately by a harsh metallic grating sound.

“At last!” I heard the Colonel cry in French. “It rises! Be careful how you ascend.”

Slowly, and with infinite care, I crept upward, but as I did so I heard my companion’s echoing footsteps receding into the gloomy throat of Sâ, yet just as I had gained the ledge forming the lips I heard a piercing shriek, followed by a loud splash.

I shouted, but there was no answer. My companion had stumbled into some chasm, and I was alone. The light of the hideous eyes had died out, and the spot was in almost total darkness. A dozen times I called his name, but there was no reassuring reply. Then, cautiously creeping forward upon my hands and knees, fearing the worst, I soon came to the edge of an abyss. Some stones I gathered and flung in. By the sound of the splash I knew the water must be of enormous depth. There, in that dark uncanny spot, had Colonel Flatters, the great explorer, whose intrepidity has been for years admired by the world, met his death.

A long time I spent alternately shouting and listening. He might, I reflected, have been saved by falling stunned upon some rocky ledge. But I remembered hearing the splash. No, he had undoubtedly been precipitated into the water: the inky flood had closed over him.

After diligent search I found a spot where the abyss ended, and again crept forward, still in darkness most intense. Yet the air seemed fresh, and I felt convinced that some outlet must lay beyond. How long, however, I toiled on in that narrow tunnel I know not, save that its dampness chilled me; and when at last it widened in ascending, I found myself a few minutes afterwards amid brushwood and brambles in the outer world.

That night I wandered across the large fertile tract, but could not at first recognise it. When dawn spread, however, I saw around me a ridge of dunes that were familiar landmarks, and recognised, to my amazement, that I was at the oasis of Am Ohannan, on the direct caravan route that runs across the barren Afelèle to Touat.

I had travelled nearly seventy miles in a subterranean region unknown to man, but in so doing had solved the problem that had so long puzzled geographers, the reason why the Igharghar no longer flowed. Besides, I had ascertained the fate of the hapless explorer, whose loss is lamented by both Arabs and Roumis to this day. Within one moon of my escape I was enabled to rejoin my people, and when news of my adventure reached the Bureau Arabe, in Algiers, I was summoned thither to give a detailed account of it before a small assembly of geographers and military officers.

This I did, a report of it appearing in English in The Geographical Journal a month later. Of late, several attempts have been made by French expeditions to reach that uncanny realm of eternal darkness, but without success. Its entrance beneath the dry cataract of the Igharghar is now merely an overflowing well, around which a little herbage has grown, while its exit on the Am Ohannan I have unfortunately failed to re-discover. But since this strange adventure I have been known among my fellow tribesmen throughout the desert as “El Waci,” or The Teacher, because I have been enabled to prove to the French the existence of an undreamed-of region, and to elucidate the Secret of Sâ.

Chapter Four

The Three Dwarfs of Lebo

When my beard, now long, scraggy, and grey, was yet soft as silk upon my youthful chin, I was sent as spy into Agadez, the mysterious City of the Black Sultan. At that time it was the richest, most zealously guarded, and most strongly fortified town in the whole Sahara, and surrounded, as it constantly was, by marauding tribes and enemies of all sorts, a vigilant watch was kept day and night, and woe betide any stranger found within its colossal walls, for the most fiendish of tortures that the mind of man could devise was certain to be practised upon him, and his body eventually given to the hungry dogs at the city gate.

In order, however, to ascertain its true strength and the number of its garrison, I, as one of the younger and more adventurous of our clansmen, was chosen by Tamahu, our Sheikh, to enter and bring back report to our encampment in the rocky fastness of the Tignoutin. Therefore I removed my big black veil, assumed the white haik and burnouse of the Beni-Mansour, a peaceful tribe further north, and contrived to be captured as slave by a party of raiding Ennitra who were encamped by the well of Tafidet, five miles from the capital of Ahir. As I had anticipated, I was soon taken to the City of the Black Sultan, and there sold in the slave-market, first becoming the property of a Jew merchant, then of Hanaza, the Grand Vizier of the Sultan. As personal slave of this high official I was lodged within the palace, or Fada, that veritable city within a city, containing as it did nearly three thousand inhabitants, over one thousand of whom were inmates of his Majesty’s harem.

In the whole of Africa, no monarch, not even the Moorish Lord of the Land of the Maghrib, was housed so luxuriously as this half-negro conqueror of the Asben. When first I entered the Fada as slave, I was struck by the magnificence of the wonderful domain. As I crossed court after court, each more beautiful than the one before, and each devoted to a separate department of the royal household, the guards, the janissaries, the treasurer, the armourers, and the eunuchs, I was amazed at every turn by their magnificence and beauty. At last we came to the court of the Grand Vizier, a smaller but prettier place, with a cool, plashing fountain tiled in blue and white, and shaded by figs, myrtles, and trailing vines. Beyond, I could see an arched gateway in the black wall, before which stood two giant negro guards in bright blue, their drawn swords flashing in the sun. Of my conductor I enquired whither that gate led, and was told it was impassable to all save the Sultan himself, for it was the gate of the Courts of Love, the entrance to the royal harem.

Through the many months during which I served my capricious master, that closed, iron-studded door, zealously guarded night and day by its mute janissaries with their curved scimitars, was a constant source of mystery to me. Often I sat in the courtyard and dreamed of the thousand terrible dramas which that ponderous door hid from those outside that world of love, hatred, and all the fiercest passions of the human heart. The Sultan was fickle and capricious. The favourite of to-day was the discarded of to-morrow. The bright-eyed houri who, loaded with jewels, could twist her master round her finger one day, was the next the merest harem slave, compelled to wash the feet of the woman who had succeeded her in her royal master’s favour. Truly the harem of the Sultan of the Ahir was a veritable hotbed of intrigue, where ofttimes the innocent victims of jealousy were cast alive to the wild beasts, or compelled to partake of the Cup of Death – coffee wherein chopped hair had been placed – a draught that was inevitably fatal.

One brilliant night, when the silver moonbeams whitened the court wherein I lived, I sat in the deep shadow of the oleanders, sad and lonely. Through six long dreary months had I been held slave by the Grand Vizier, yet it was Allah’s will that I should have no opportunity to return to my people. So I possessed myself in patience. Through those months mine eyes and ears had been ever on the alert, and long ago I had completed my investigations. Suddenly my reflections were interrupted, for I saw standing before me a veritable vision of beauty, a pale-faced girl in the gorgeous costume of the harem, covered with glittering jewels, and wearing the tiny fez, pearl-embroidered zouave, and filmy serroual of the Sultan’s favourites. Not more than eighteen, her unveiled countenance was white as any Englishwoman’s; her startled eyes were bright as the moonbeams above, and as she stood mute and trembling before me, her bare, panting bosom, half-covered by her long, dark tresses, rose and fell quickly. I raised my eyes, and saw that the negro guards were sleeping. She had escaped from the Courts of Love.

“Quick!” she gasped, terrified. “Hide me, while there is yet time.”

At her bidding I rose instantly, for her wondrous beauty held me as beneath some witch’s spell. And at the same time I led the way to my tiny den, a mere hole in the gigantic wall that separated the royal harem from the outer courts of the palace.

“My name is Zohra,” she explained, when she had entered; “and thine?” – she paused for an instant, looking me straight in the face. “Of a verity,” she added at length, “thine is Ahamadou, the spy of the dreaded Azjar, the Veiled Men.”

I started, for I had believed my secret safe.

“What knowest thou of me?” I gasped eagerly.

“That thou hast risked all in order to report to thy people upon the Black Sultan’s strength,” she answered, sinking upon my narrow divan, throwing back her handsome head and gazing into my eyes. “But our interests are mutual. I have these ten months been held captive, and desire to escape. By bribing one of the slaves with the Sultan’s ring I contrived to have poison placed in the kouss-kouss of the guards – ”

“You have killed them!” I cried, peering forth, and noticing the ghastly look upon their faces as they slept at their posts.

“It was the only way,” she answered, shrugging her shoulders. “To obtain me the Sultan’s men murdered my kinsmen, and put our village to the sword. Mine is but a mild revenge.”

“Of what tribe art thou?” I enquired eagerly, detecting in her soft sibillations an accent entirely unfamiliar.

“I am of the Kel-Oui, and was born at Lebo.”

“At Lebo!” I cried eagerly. “Then thou knowest of the Three Dwarfs of Lebo?”

“Yea. And furthermore I have learnt their secret, a secret which shall be thine alone in return for safe conduct to my people.”

“But my clansmen are in deadly feud with thine,” I observed reflectively.

“Does that affect thy decision?” she enquired in a tone of reproach.

I reflected, and saw how utterly impossible it seemed that I myself could escape the vigilance of these ever-watchful guards of the many gates which lay between myself and freedom. I glanced at the frail girl lying upon my poor ragged divan, her girdle and throat blazing with jewels, and felt my heart sink within me.

“Thou thinkest that because I am a woman I have no courage,” she observed, her keen eyes reading my secret thoughts. “But hist! listen!”

I held my breath, and as I did so the footsteps of men fell upon the flags of the courtyard. We peered forth through the chink in the wooden shutter, which at night closed my window, and saw two men carrying a bier, followed by two gigantic negro eunuchs. Upon the bier was a body covered by a cloth; and as it passed we both caught sight of gay-coloured silks and lace. Below the black pall a slim white hand, sparkling with diamonds, moved convulsively, and as the cortège passed, a low stifling cry reached us – the despairing cry of a woman.

“All!” gasped my companion, dismayed. “It is Zulaimena! Yesterday she ruled the harem, but this morning it was whispered into our lord’s ear that she had tried to poison him, and he condemned her and myself to be given alive to the alligators,” and she shuddered at thought of the fate which awaited her if detected.

Conversing only in whispers, we waited till the palace was hushed in sleep. Then, when she had attired herself in one of my old serving-dresses and bound her hair tightly, we crept cautiously out into the moonlit court. Over the horse-shoe arch of the harem-gate the single light burned yellow and faint, while on either side the guards crouched, their dead fingers still grasping their ponderous scimitars. All was still, therefore quietly and swiftly we passed into the Court of the Treasury, and thence into that of the Eunuchs. Here we were instantly challenged by two guards with drawn swords, clansmen of those who lay dead at the harem-gate.

“Whence goest thou?” they both enquired with one voice, suddenly awakened from gazing mutely at the stars, their blades flashing in the moonbeams.

“Our master, the Grand Vizier, has had an apoplexy, and is dying!” I cried, uttering the first excuse that rose to my lips. “Let not his life be upon thine heads, for we go forth to seek the court physician Ibrahim.”

“Speed on the wings of haste!” they cried. “May the One Merciful have compassion upon him!”

Thus we passed onward, relating the same story at each gate, and being accorded the same free passage, until at last we came to an enormous steel-bound door which gave exit into the city; the gate which was closed and barred by its ponderous bolts at the maghrib hour, and opened not until dawn save for the dark faced Sultan himself.

Here I gave exactly the same account of our intentions to the captain of the guard. He chanced to be a friend of my master’s, and was greatly concerned when I vividly described his critical condition.

“Let the slaves pass!” I heard him cry a moment later, and, with a loud creaking, the iron-studded door which had resisted centuries of siege and battle, slowly swung back upon its creaking hinges. At that instant, however, a prying guard raised his lantern and held it close to my companion’s face.

“By the Prophet’s beard, a woman!” he cried aloud, starting back, an instant later. “We are tricked!”

“Seize them!” commanded the captain, and in a moment three guards threw themselves upon us. Swift as thought I drew my keen jambiyah, my trusty knife which I had ever carried in my sash throughout my captivity, and plunged it into the heart of the first man who laid hands upon me, while a second later the man who gripped Zohra, received a cut full across his broad negro features which for ever spoilt his beauty. Then, with a wild shout to my companion to follow, I dashed forward and ran for my life.

Lithe and agile as a gazelle in the desert she sped on beside me along the dark crooked silent streets. In a few minutes the tragedy of the harem-gate would be discovered, and every effort would be then made to recapture the eloping favourite of the brutal Black Sultan. We knew well that if captured both of us would be given alive to the alligators, a punishment too terrible to contemplate. But together we sped on, our pace quickened by the fiendish yells of our pursuers, until doubling in a maze of narrow crooked streets, we succeeded at last, with Allah directing our footsteps, in evading the howling guards and gaining one of the four gates of the city, where the same story as we had told in the Fada resulted in the barrier being opened for us, and a moment later we found ourselves in the wild, barren plain, at that hour lying white beneath the brilliant moon. We paused not, however, to admire picturesque effects, but strode boldly forward, eager to put as great a distance as possible between ourselves and the stronghold of the Ahir, ere the dawn.

Fortunately my bright-eyed fellow-fugitive was well acquainted with the country around Agadez, therefore we were enabled to journey by untravelled paths; but the three days we spent in that burning inhospitable wilderness, ere we reached the well where we obtained our first handful of dates and slaked our thirst, were among the most terrible of any I have experienced during my many wanderings over the sandy Saharan waste.

On that evening when the mysterious horizon was ablaze with the fiery sunset, and I had turned my face to the Holy Ca’aba, I was dismayed to discover that, instead of travelling towards the country of her people, the Kel-Oui, we had struck out in an entirely different direction, but when I mentioned it she merely replied —

“I promised, in return for thine assistance, to lead thee unto the Three Dwarfs of Lebo, the secret of which none know save myself. Ere three suns have set thine eyes shall witness that which will amaze thee.”

Next day we trudged still forward into a stony, almost impenetrable country, utterly unknown to me, and two days later, having ascended a rocky ridge, my conductress suddenly halted almost breathless, her tiny feet sadly cut by the sharp stones notwithstanding the wrappings I had placed about them, and pointing before her, cried —

“Behold! The Three Dwarfs!”

Eagerly I strained mine eyes in the direction indicated, and there discerned in the small oasis below, about an hour’s march distant, three colossal pyramids of rock of similar shape to those beside the Nile.

“Yon fertile spot was Lebo until ten years ago, when the men of the Black Sultan came and destroyed it, and took its inhabitants as slaves,” she explained. “See! From here thou canst distinguish the white walls of the ruins gleaming amongst the palms. We of the Kel-Oui had lived here since the days of the Prophet, until our enemies of the Ahir conquered us. But let us haste forward, and I will impart unto thee the secret I have promised.”

Together we clambered down over the rocks and gained the sandy plain, at last reaching the ruined and desolate town where the cracked smoke-stained walls were half overgrown by tangled masses of greenery, welcome in that sunbaked wilderness, and presently came to the base of the first of the colossal monuments of a past and long-forgotten age. They were built of blocks of dark grey granite, sadly chipped and worn at the base, but higher up still well preserved, having regard to the generations that must have arisen and passed since the hands that built them crumbled to dust.

“By pure accident,” explained the bright-faced girl when together we halted to gaze upward, “I discovered the secret of these wonders of Lebo. Thou hast, by thy lion’s courage, saved my life, therefore unto thee is due the greatest reward that I can offer thee. Two years ago I fell captive in the hands of thy people, the Azjar, over in the Tinghert, and it was by thine own good favour I was released. That is why I recognised thee in the palace of Agadez. Now once again I owe my freedom unto thee; therefore, in order that the months thou hast spent in Agadez shall not be wholly wasted, I will reveal unto thee the secret which I have always withheld from mine own people.”

Then, taking my hand, she quickly walked along the base of the giant structure until she came to the corner facing the direction of the sunrise; then, counting her footsteps, she proceeded with care, stopping at last beneath the sloping wall, and examining the ground. At her feet was a small slab, hidden by the red sand of the desert, which she removed, drawing from beneath it a roll of untanned leopard-hide. This she unwrapped carefully, displaying to my gaze a worn and tattered parchment, once emblazoned in blue and gold, but now sadly faded and half illegible.

I examined it eagerly, and found it written in puzzling hieroglyphics, such as I had never before seen.

“Our marabout Ahman, who was well versed in the language of the ancients, deciphered this for me only a few hours before his death. It is the testimony of the great Lebo, king of all the lands from the southern shore of Lake Tsâd to the Congo, and founder of the Kel-Oui nation, now, alas! so sadly fallen from their high estate. The parchment states plainly that Lebo, having conquered and despoiled the Ethiopians in the last year of his reign, gathered together all the treasure and brought it hither to this spot, which bore his name, in that day a gigantic walled city larger by far than Agadez.”

I glanced around upon the few miserable ruins of mud-built houses, and saw beyond them large mounds which, in themselves, indicated that the foundations of an important centre of a forgotten civilisation lay buried beneath where we stood.

“Lebo had one son,” continued Zohra, “and he had revolted against his father; therefore the latter, feeling that his strength was failing, and having been told by the sorcerers that on his death his great kingdom would dwindle until his name became forgotten, resolved to build these three pyramids, that they should remain throughout all ages as monuments of his greatness.”

“And the treasure?” I asked. “Is it stated what became of it?”