“Cease thine evil talk and answer me,”
said Ignosi angrily. “Wilt thou show the
place where the stones are, or wilt thou not?
If thou wilt not thou diest, even now,” and
he seized a spear and held it over her.
“I will not show it; thou darest not kill me,
darest not! He who slays me will be accursed
for ever.”
Slowly Ignosi brought down the spear till it pricked
the prostrate heap of rags.
With a wild yell Gagool sprang to her feet, then fell
again and rolled upon the floor.
“Nay, I will show thee. Only let me live,
let me sit in the sun and have a bit of meat to suck,
and I will show thee.”
“It is well. I thought that I should find
a way to reason with thee. To-morrow shalt thou
go with Infadoos and my white brothers to the place,
and beware how thou failest, for if thou showest it
not, then thou shalt slowly die. I have spoken.”
“I will not fail, Ignosi. I always keep
my word—ha! ha! ha! Once before
a woman showed the chamber to a white man, and behold!
evil befell him,” and here her wicked eyes glinted.
“Her name was Gagool also. Perchance I
was that woman.”
“Thou liest,” I said, “that was
ten generations gone.”
“Mayhap, mayhap; when one lives long one forgets.
Perhaps it was my mother’s mother who told me;
surely her name was Gagool also. But mark, ye
will find in the place where the bright things are
a bag of hide full of stones. The man filled
that bag, but he never took it away. Evil befell
him, I say, evil befell him! Perhaps it was my
mother’s mother who told me. It will be
a merry journey—we can see the bodies of
those who died in the battle as we go. Their eyes
will be gone by now, and their ribs will be hollow.
Ha! ha! ha!”
THE PLACE OF DEATH
It was already dark on the third day after the scene
described in the previous chapter when we camped in
some huts at the foot of the “Three Witches,”
as the triangle of mountains is called to which Solomon’s
Great Road runs. Our party consisted of our three
selves and Foulata, who waited on us—especially
on Good—Infadoos, Gagool, who was borne
along in a litter, inside which she could be heard
muttering and cursing all day long, and a party of
guards and attendants. The mountains, or rather
the three peaks of the mountain, for the mass was
evidently the result of a solitary upheaval, were,
as I have said, in the form of a triangle, of which
the base was towards us, one peak being on our right,
one on our left, and one straight in front of us.
Never shall I forget the sight afforded by those three
towering peaks in the early sunlight of the following
morning. High, high above us, up into the blue
air, soared their twisted snow-wreaths. Beneath
the snow-line the peaks were purple with heaths, and
so were the wild moors that ran up the slopes towards
them. Straight before us the white ribbon of
Solomon’s Great Road stretched away uphill to
the foot of the centre peak, about five miles from
us, and there stopped. It was its terminus.
