Part 23 (1/2)
The natives ate hardly any meat, but mainly vegetables and fruits, or young shoots of trees, or they would suck reed-stalks and lotus-flowers. But they also took blood and milk and cheese; and there was no other food. No, Uncle Catullus would never have stood it here, thought Lucius, when the travellers went still farther south, to the capital of Ethiopia, Meroe, on the island of the same name. And here Lucius discovered that the famous date-wines and topaz-yellow liqueurs of Napata and Meroe were a sheer hoax, that there was no wine or liqueur whatever distilled in Ethiopia and that the delicious drinks with which Master Ghizla and Caleb had provided him and Uncle Catullus came from no farther than Lake Mareotis at Alexandria!
A fabulous vegetation, however, grew luxuriantly over the island. If the people and animals were small, the trees shot up with amazing vigour: the huge palm-trees, the ebony-trees, the ceratia and persea, under whose gigantic domes of thick foliage the green villages of little plaited wicker huts disappeared from view. In the marshes round Lake Psebo the travellers hunted, if not the great snake, at any rate the terrible boa, which even ventures to attack the elephant. And the natives showed them a fight between one of these boas and an elephant and a hippopotamus.
They visited the gold-mines, the copper-mines, the jewel-mines, the temples of Hercules and Pan and of a strange barbaric deity. The dead were buried in the Nile, or else they were kept in the houses under a mica slab of human form. In the middle of the town stood the Golden Temple, where the king dwelt in sacred mystery. There were slabs of gold between bamboo columns. In former ages the priests elected the kings and deposed them at will; but a certain king had caused all the priests to be strangled and since then a law had been pa.s.sed that, if the king were maimed or lost a limb, all the people of his court had to inflict the same injury on themselves, for which reason the king's person was guarded with great care and was divine and sacred; and the travellers did not see him.
CHAPTER XXVI
After the fierce hunting by day, the nights were twinkling mysteries of great s.h.i.+ning, diamond stars; and Sirius shone like a white sun. The rustling silence, the audible stillness of the vast forests lapped the encampment of the caravan, where the fires died out but still glowed sufficiently to keep the wild animals at a distance and where the guards and drivers lay immersed in sound sleep. Lucius was happy in that mystery; and in the silvery sheen of the night the last memories of his grief seemed to lift like wisps of disappearing mist.
The travellers had approached the Land of Ophir; and the pillars of Sesostris would be reached next day. In this last twinkling night of forest-life, with the stars s.h.i.+ning through the foliage like a diamond cupola above an emerald dome, Lucius had left his tent while all the others slept. Next to his tent were those of Thrasyllus, Caleb and Cora. And he saw Cora sitting outside her tent, which was the biggest, because she was a woman, and made of spotted lynx-hides, whose warmth resisted the plentiful dew. And she rose and stretched her hands to the ground, in salutation, and preserved that att.i.tude, shyly.
”Are you not sleeping, Cora?” asked Lucius.
”No, my lord. I cannot sleep when the nights twinkle like this, when the stars send forth such rays that it is really as though they were moving to and fro. I feel that I must go on gazing at them until they fade away.”
”Life here in the forest is too wild for you, too lonely....”
”Life in the forest is paradise, my lord. By day Thrasyllus tells me wonderful things about the mountains and the plants and the animals and the savage tribes; and so the hours pa.s.s till you return from hunting....”
”And you sing to us and dance in the light of the fire and charm the rude hunters and Caleb in particular....”
She smiled and made no reply.
Then she continued:
”And the nights are such strange mysteries of sounds and silence and of radiant stars; and it is as though Sirius grew bigger nightly.”
”And you are never frightened?”
”I am not frightened, my lord.”
”Not even at night?”
”Least of all at night, because ...”
”Because what?”
”Because then you have returned; and I feel safest where you are.”
”From that height yonder, Cora, one can see the sea. I love the sea and I often miss the sea in the forest. I am glad that we are near the sea again. As I returned from hunting, I could just catch sight of a streak of sea from there. I should like to see the sea now, at night, with all those twinkling stars above it.”
”Yes, my lord.”
”Come with me ... that is, if you are not frightened.”
”I am not frightened, my lord, where you are.”