“Ah! thou art there, old man.  Tell me how it is that things have gone wrong in thine household.  Forsooth, it seems that these my guests were set upon.  Ay, and one was nigh to being slain by the hot-pot to be eaten of those brutes, thy children, and had not the others fought gallantly they too had been slain, and not even I could have called back the life which had been loosed from the body.  What means it, old man?  What hast thou to say that I should not give thee over to those who execute my vengeance?”

Her voice had risen in her anger, and it rang clear and cold against the rocky walls.  Also I thought I could see her eyes flash through the gauze that hid them.  I saw poor Billali, whom I had believed to be a very fearless person, positively quiver with terror at her words.

“Oh ‘Hiya!’ oh She!” he said, without lifting his white head from the floor.  “Oh She, as thou art great be merciful, for I am now as ever thy servant to obey.  It was no plan or fault of mine, oh She, it was those wicked ones who are called my children.  Led on by a woman whom thy guest the Pig had scorned, they would have followed the ancient custom of the land, and eaten the fat black stranger who came hither with these thy guests the Baboon and the Lion who is sick, thinking that no word had come from thee about the Black one.  But when the Baboon and the Lion saw what they would do, they slew the woman, and slew also their servant to save him from the horror of the pot.  Then those evil ones, ay, those children of the Wicked One who lives in the Pit, they went mad with the lust of blood, and flew at the throats of the Lion and the Baboon and the Pig.  But gallantly they fought.  Oh Hiya! they fought like very men, and slew many, and held their own, and then I came and saved them, and the evildoers have I sent on hither to Kor to be judged of thy greatness, oh She! and here they are.”

“Ay, old man, I know it, and to-morrow will I sit in the great hall and do justice upon them, fear not.  And for thee, I forgive thee, though hardly.  See that thou dost keep thine household better.  Go.”

Billali rose upon his knees with astonishing alacrity, bowed his head thrice, and his white beard sweeping the ground, crawled down the apartment as he had crawled up it, till he finally vanished through the curtains, leaving me, not a little to my alarm, alone with this terrible but most fascinating person.

XIII

AYESHA UNVEILS

“There,” said She, “he has gone, the white-bearded old fool!  Ah, how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life.  He gathereth it up like water, but like water it runneth through his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, ‘See, he is a wise man!’ Is it not so?  But how call they thee?  ‘Baboon,’ he says,” and she laughed; “but that is the fashion of these savages who lack imagination, and fly to the beasts they resemble for a name.  How do they call thee in thine own country, stranger?”