I turned, and followed him down the passage, and when we reached the great central cave saw that many Amahagger, some robed, and some merely clad in the sweet simplicity of a leopard skin, were hurrying along it.  We mingled with the throng, and walked up the enormous and, indeed, almost interminable cave.  All the way its walls were elaborately sculptured, and every twenty paces or so passages opened out of it at right angles, leading, Billali told me, to tombs, hollowed in the rock by “the people who were before.”  Nobody visited those tombs now, he said; and I must say that my heart rejoiced when I thought of the opportunities of antiquarian research which opened out before me.

At last we came to the head of the cave, where there was a rock dais almost exactly similar to the one on which we had been so furiously attacked, a fact that proved to me that these dais must have been used as altars, probably for the celebration of religious ceremonies, and more especially of rites connected with the interment of the dead.  On either side of this dais were passages leading, Billali informed me, to other caves full of dead bodies.  “Indeed,” he added, “the whole mountain is full of dead, and nearly all of them are perfect.”

In front of the dais were gathered a great number of people of both sexes, who stood staring about in their peculiar gloomy fashion, which would have reduced Mark Tapley himself to misery in about five minutes.  On the dais was a rude chair of black wood inlaid with ivory, having a seat made of grass fibre, and a footstool formed of a wooden slab attached to the framework of the chair.

Suddenly there was a cry of “Hiya!  Hiya!” ("She!  She!"), and thereupon the entire crowd of spectators instantly precipitated itself upon the ground, and lay still as though it were individually and collectively stricken dead, leaving me standing there like some solitary survivor of a massacre.  As it did so a long string of guards began to defile from a passage to the left, and ranged themselves on either side of the dais.  Then followed about a score of male mutes, then as many women mutes bearing lamps, and then a tall white figure, swathed from head to foot, in whom I recognised She herself.  She mounted the dais and sat down upon the chair, and spoke to me in Greek, I suppose because she did not wish those present to understand what she said.

“Come hither, oh Holly,” she said, “and sit thou at my feet, and see me do justice on those who would have slain thee.  Forgive me if my Greek doth halt like a lame man; it is so long since I have heard the sound of it that my tongue is stiff, and will not bend rightly to the words.”

I bowed, and, mounting the dais, sat down at her feet.

“How hast thou slept, my Holly?” she asked.

“I slept not well, oh Ayesha!” I answered with perfect truth, and with an inward fear that perhaps she knew how I had passed the heart of the night.