The Great White Queen Part 32

The dread of her horrible fate had caused her to faint, and it was a long time ere we could bring her back to the knowledge of her surroundings.

Tenderly the Dagombas, who a few minutes before would have brutally murdered her, carried her into one of the small luxuriantly-furnished chambers of the harem, and at my request left me alone with her. Kona, though fierce as a wild beast in war, was tender-hearted as a child where undefended women were concerned, and would have remained, but as commander of the forces now engaged in sacking the palace many onerous duties devolved upon him. Therefore I was left alone with her.

Her eyes closed, her fair hair disarranged, her clothing torn and blood-stained, she lay upon a soft divan, pale and motionless as one dead. I chafed her tiny hands, and released her rich robe at the throat to give her air, wondering by what strange chain of circ.u.mstances she had come to be an inmate of the private apartments of our enemy Samory. At last, however, her breast heaved and fell slowly once or twice, and presently she opened her beautiful eyes, gazing up at me with a puzzled, half-frightened expression.

"Liola," I exclaimed softly, in the language of Mo. "Thou art with friends, have no further fear. The soldiers of thy lover Omar have wreaked a vengeance complete and terrible upon thy captor Samory."

"But the savages!" she gasped. "They will kill me as they ma.s.sacred all the women."

"No, no, they will not," I a.s.sured her, placing my arm tenderly beneath her handsome head. "The savages are our Dagomba allies who, not knowing that thou wert a native of Mo, would have butchered thee like the rest."

"And thou didst save me?" she cried. "Yes, I remember, thou didst shoot dead the brute who would have cut off my foot to secure my diamond anklet. I owe my life to thee."

"Ah! do not speak of that," I cried. "Calm thyself and rest a.s.sured of thy safety, for thou shalt return with us to the land of thy fathers.

Thou shalt, ere a moon has run its course, pillow thine head upon the shoulder of the man thou lovest, Omar, Naba of Mo."

She blushed deeply at my words, and her small white hand still smeared with blood, gripped my wrist. Her heart seemed too full for words, and in this manner she silently thanked me for rescuing her from the awful fate to which she had so nearly been hurried.

Soon she recovered from the shock sufficiently to sit up and chat.

Together we listened to the roar of the excited mult.i.tude outside, and from the lattice window could see columns of dense black smoke rising from the city, where the fighting-men of Mo, in accordance with their instructions from Omar, having sacked the place, were now setting it on fire.

In answer to my eager questions as to her adventures after her seizure by the soldiers of the Great White Queen, she said:

"Yes. It is true they captured me, together with my girl slave, Wyona, and hurried me towards the palace. Wyona fought and bit like a tigress, and one of the men becoming infuriated, killed her. Just at that moment the attack was made upon us by the populace, and they, witnessing his action, tore him limb from limb. Then, in the fierce conflict that followed, I escaped from their clutches in the same manner as Omar and thyself. Knowing of the attack to be made upon the palace I fled for safety in the opposite direction, and remained in hiding throughout the night in the house of one of my kinswomen away towards the city-gate. At last the report spread that the people had taken the palace by a.s.sault, the Naya had been deposed, and Omar enthroned Naba in her stead. Then, feeling that safety was a.s.sured, I ventured forth, but ere I had gone far I met a body of strange fighting men. They were Arabs, and proved to be men from this stronghold of our enemy Samory. After a strenuous attempt to cross the city they had been repulsed by the people, leaving many dead, and in their retreat towards the city-gate they seized me and bore me away in triumph here."

"How long hast thou been in Koussan?"

"Twenty days ago we arrived, after fighting our way back and losing half our force in skirmishes with the hostile savages of the forest. I was brought here to Samory's harem as slave, attired in the garments I now wear, loaded with jewels torn from the body of one of his favourites, who, incurring his displeasure, had been promptly strangled by the chief of the negro eunuchs, and placed in an apartment with three other slaves to do my bidding, there to await such time as it should please my Arab captor to inspect me. I was contemplating death," she added, dropping her deep blue eyes. "If your attack upon the Kasbah had not been delivered I should most a.s.suredly have killed myself to-day ere the going down of the sun."

"It was fortunate that I recognized thee, or thou wouldst have been hacked to pieces by the keen blades of our savage allies," I said.

"Take me hence," she urged panting. "I cannot bear to hear the shout of the victor and the despairing cry of the vanquished. It is horrible.

Throughout the night we, in the women's quarters, have dreaded the fate awaiting us if the invaders, whom we thought were savages of the forest, should gain the mastery and enter the palace. From the high windows yonder we witnessed the fight, knowing that our lives depended upon its issue, and judge our dismay and despair when, soon after dawn, we saw the Arabs overwhelmed and the Kasbah fall into the hands of their conquerors.

Many of my wretched companions killed themselves with their poignards rather than fall into the hands of the blacks, while the majority hid themselves only to be afterwards discovered and butchered. Ah, it is all terrible, terrible!"

"True," I answered. "Yet it is only revenge for the depredations and heartless atrocities committed by these people upon the dwellers in thy border lands. Even at this moment Samory hath a great expedition on the northern confines of Mo, making a vigorous attempt to invade thy country, so that he shall reign upon the Emerald Throne in the place of thy lover Omar."

"An expedition to invade Mo?" she cried surprised. "Hath Samory done this; is it his intention to cause Omar's overthrow?"

"Most a.s.suredly it is," I answered. "The reason of our presence here in such force was to a.s.sault Koussan in the absence of its picked troops, twenty thousand of whom were we ascertained on their way northward, with the intention of forcing a pa.s.sage through Aribanda and the Hombori Mountains into Mo. Niaro hath led our fighting-men to repel their attack, and he is accompanied by Omar and thy father, while we are here, under Kona's leadership, to punish Samory for his intrepidity."

Then she asked how Omar fared, and I explained how it had been believed that she had died, and that all were mourning for her.

"My slave Wyona must have been mistaken for me," she answered. "And naturally, as I had given her one of my left-off robes only the day before."

"Omar believeth thee dead. Thy presence in Mo will indeed bring happiness to his eyes, and gaiety to his heart," I exclaimed happily.

"Doth he still mourn for me?" she inquired artlessly. I knew she wanted to ask me many questions regarding her lover, but her modesty forbade it.

"Since the fatal night when thou wert lost joy hath never caused a smile to cross his countenance. Sleeping and waking he thinketh only of thee, revering thy memory, reflecting upon the happy moments spent at thy side, as one fondly remembers a pleasant dream or adventures in some fair paradise, yet ever sad in the knowledge that those blissful days can never return. His is an empty honour, a kingship devoid of all pleasure because thou art no longer his."

Her lips trembled slightly, and I thought her brilliant eyes became brighter for a moment because of an unshed tear.

"I am still his," she said slowly, with emphasis. "I am ready, nay anxious, to return to him. Thou hast saved me from death and from dishonour; truly thou art a worthy friend of Omar's, for by thy valiant deed alone thou restorest unto him the woman he loveth."

I urged her to utter no word of thanks, and pointing to the sky, rendered every moment more dark by the increasing volumes of smoke ascending from the city, said:

"See! Our men are busy preparing for the destruction of this palace that through many centuries hath been a centre of Mohammedan influence and oppression. Time doth not admit of thanks, for we both have much to do ere we start forth on our return to Mo, and----"

My words were interrupted by a terrific explosion in such close proximity to us that it caused us to jump, and was followed by a deafening crash of falling masonry. From the lattice we saw the high handsome minaret of the palace topple and fall amid a dense smoke and shower of stones. Our men had undermined it and blown it up.

Liola shuddered, glancing at me in alarm.

"Fear not," I said. "Ere we leave, the city of Koussan must be devastated and burned. Samory hath never given quarter, or shown mercy to his weaker neighbours, and we will show none. Besides, he held thee captive as he hath already held thy lover Omar and myself. He sold us to slavers that we might be sacrificed in k.u.ma.s.si, therefore the curse of thy Crocodile-G.o.d Zomara placed upon him hath at last fallen. The flood-gates of vengeance now opened the hand of man cannot close."

The great court of the harem, deserted by the troops, had become filled with volumes of dense smoke, showing that fire had broken out somewhere within the palace, and ever and anon explosions of a more or less violent character told us that the hands of the destroyers were actually at work.

The sack of the Kasbah was indeed complete.

The loot, of which there was an enormous quant.i.ty of considerable value, was being removed to a place of safety by a large body of men told off for the purpose. Although Samory was a fugitive, yet the treasures found within his private apartments were of no mean order, and ere noon had pa.s.sed preparations were being made for its conveyance to Mo, the greater part of the city being already in flames. The fire roared and crackled, choking smoke-clouds obscured the sun, and the heat wafted up was stifling. All opposition to us had long ago ceased, but whenever an Arab was found secreted or a fugitive, he was shot down without mercy. To linger longer in the harem might, I judged, be dangerous on account of the place having been fired, therefore we went together out into the court, and stepping over the mutilated bodies of its beautiful prisoners, entered the chamber where Samory had held his court. Empty, dismantled and wrecked, its appearance showed plainly how the mighty monarch had fallen. Even the great bejewelled ma.n.u.script of the Koran, the Arab book of Everlasting Will, that had reposed upon its golden stand at the end of the fine, high-roofed chamber, had been torn up, for its leaves lay scattered about the pavement and after the jewels had been hastily dug from their settings, the covers of green velvet had been cast aside as worthless. Every seat or divan had been either broken or slashed by swords, every vessel or mirror smashed, every ornament damaged beyond repair.

Thinking it best to leave her, a woman, in care of a guard of our armed men, while I went forward, I made the suggestion, but she would not hear of it.

"No," she answered smiling. "I will remain ever at thy side, for beside thee I fear not. Thou art my rescuer, and my life is thine."

"But some of the sights we may witness are not such as a woman's eyes should behold," I answered.

"It mattereth not. That thou wilt allow me to accompany thee, is all I ask."

"Very well," I replied, laughing. "Thou art welcome. Come."

By my side she hurried through the chamber wherein had stood the throne, and thence through several handsome courts, wandering at last into another smaller chamber at the side of which I noticed an alcove with a huge Arab bed surrounded by quaint lattices, so dark that my gaze could not penetrate to its recesses.

As we pa.s.sed, the movement of some object in the deep shadow beside the bed attracted my attention. Advancing quickly I detected the figure of a man, and, fearing a sudden dash by one of our lurking foes, I again drew my sword.

Liola, seeing this, gave vent to a little scream of alarm and placed her hand upon my arm in fear, but next second the fugitive, antic.i.p.ating my intention to attack him, sprang suddenly forward into the light.

The bearded face, the fierce, flashing eyes, the thick lips and bushy brows were all familiar to me. Although he wore the white cotton garb of the meanest slave, I recognised him in an instant.

It was the great Arab chieftain Samory!

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

LIOLA'S DISCOVERY.

WITH a sudden bound I left Liola's side and sprang upon the leader of our enemies, clutching him fiercely by the throat and shouting for a.s.sistance. No one was, however, near, and for a few moments we struggled desperately. He was unarmed, and I, having unfortunately dropped my sword in the encounter, our conflict resolved itself into a fierce wrestle for the possession of the weapon which must give victory to the one into whose hands it fell. Once Samory, wiry and muscular like all Arabs, notwithstanding his age, stooped swiftly in an endeavour to s.n.a.t.c.h up the blade, but seeing his intention, my fingers tightened their grip upon his throat, and he was compelled to spring up again without obtaining possession of the weapon. For several minutes our struggle was desperate, for he had managed to pinion my arms, and I knew that ere long I must be powerless, his strength being far superior to my own.