V
The Head of the Ethiopian

At length the heralds and forerunners of the royal sun had done their work, and, searching out the shadows, had caused them to flee away. Then up he came in glory from his ocean-bed, and flooded the earth with warmth and light. I sat there in the boat listening to the gentle lapping of the water and watched him rise, till presently the slight drift of the boat brought the odd-shaped rock, or peak, at the end of the promontory which we had weathered with so much peril, between me and the majestic sight, and blotted it from my view. I still continued, however, to stare at the rock, absently enough, till presently it became edged with the fire of the growing light behind it, and then I started, as well I might, for I perceived that the top of the peak, which was about eighty feet high by one hundred and fifty feet thick at its base, was shaped like a negro’s head and face, whereon was stamped a most fiendish and terrifying expression. There was no doubt about it; there were the thick lips, the fat cheeks, and the squat nose standing out with startling clearness against the flaming background. There, too, was the round skull, washed into shape perhaps by thousands of years of wind and weather, and, to complete the resemblance, there was a scrubby growth of weeds or lichen upon it, which against the sun looked for all the world like the wool on a colossal negro’s head. It certainly was very odd; so odd that now I believe it is not a mere freak of nature but a gigantic monument fashioned, like the well-known Egyptian Sphinx, by a forgotten people out of a pile of rock that lent itself to their design, perhaps as an emblem of warning and defiance to any enemies who approached the harbour. Unfortunately we were never able to ascertain whether or not this was the case, inasmuch as the rock was difficult of access both from the land and the waterside, and we had other things to attend to. Myself, considering the matter by the light of what we afterwards saw, I believe that it was fashioned by man, but whether or not this is so, there it stands, and sullenly stares from age to age out across the changing sea – there it stood two thousand years and more ago, when Amenartas, the Egyptian princess, and the wife of Leo’s remote ancestor Kallikrates, gazed upon its devilish face – and there I have no doubt it will still stand when as many centuries as are numbered between her day and our own are added to the year that bore us to oblivion.

“What do you think of that, Job?” I asked of our retainer, who was sitting on the edge of the boat, trying to get as much sunshine as possible, and generally looking uncommonly wretched, and I pointed to the fiery and demonical head.

“Oh Lord, sir,” answered Job, who now perceived the object for the first time, “I think that the old geneleman must have been sitting for his portrait on them rocks.”

I laughed, and the laugh woke up Leo.

“Hullo,” he said, “what’s the matter with me? I am all stiff – where is the dhow? Give me some brandy, please.”

“You may be thankful that you are not stiffer, my boy,” I answered. “The dhow is sunk, everybody on board her is drowned with the exception of us four, and your own life was only saved by a miracle”; and whilst Job, now that it was light enough, searched about in a locker for the brandy for which Leo asked, I told him the history of our night’s adventure.

“Great Heavens!” he said faintly; “and to think that we should have been chosen to live through it!”

By this time the brandy was forthcoming, and we all had a good pull at it, and thankful enough we were for it. Also the sun was beginning to get strength, and warm our chilled bones, for we had been wet through for five hours or more.

“Why,” said Leo, with a gasp as he put down the brandy bottle, “there is the head the writing talks of, the ‘rock carven like the head of an Ethiopian.’”

“Yes,” I said, “there it is.”

“Well, then,” he answered, “the whole thing is true.”

“I don’t see at all that that follows,” I answered. “We knew this head was here: your father saw it. Very likely it is not the same head that the writing talks of; or if it is, it proves nothing.”

Leo smiled at me in a superior way. “You are an unbelieving Jew, Uncle Horace,” he said. “Those who live will see.”

“Exactly so,” I answered, “and now perhaps you will observe that we are drifting across a sandbank into the mouth of the river. Get hold of your oar, Job, and we will row in and see if we can find a place to land.”

The river mouth which we were entering did not appear to be a very wide one, though as yet the long banks of steaming mist that clung about its shores had not lifted sufficiently to enable us to see its exact measure. There was, as is the case with nearly every East African river, a considerable bar at the mouth, which, no doubt, when the wind was on shore and the tide running out, was absolutely impassable even for a boat drawing only a few inches. But as things were it was manageable enough, and we did not ship a cupful of water. In twenty minutes we were well across it, with but slight assistance from ourselves, and being carried by a strong though somewhat variable breeze well up the harbour. By this time the mist was being sucked up by the sun, which was getting uncomfortably hot, and we saw that the mouth of the little estuary was here about half a mile across, and that the banks were very marshy, and crowded with crocodiles lying about on the mud like logs. About a mile ahead of us, however, was what appeared to be a strip of firm land, and for this we steered. In another quarter of an hour we were there, and making the boat fast to a beautiful tree with broad shining leaves, and flowers of the magnolia species, only they were rose-coloured and not white,^[7] which hung over the water, we disembarked. This done we undressed, washed ourselves, and spread our clothes, together with the contents of the boat, in the sun to dry, which they very quickly did. Then, taking shelter from the sun under some trees, we made a hearty breakfast off a “Paysandu” potted tongue, of which we had brought a good quantity with us, congratulating ourselves loudly on our good fortune in having loaded and provisioned the boat on the previous day before the hurricane destroyed the dhow. By the time that we had finished our meal our clothes were quite dry, and we hastened to get into them, feeling not a little refreshed. Indeed, with the exception of weariness and a few bruises, none of us were the worse for the terrifying adventure which had been fatal to all our companions. Leo, it is true, had been half-drowned, but that is no great matter to a vigorous young athlete of five-and-twenty.

After breakfast we started to look about us. We were on a strip of dry land about two hundred yards broad by five hundred long, bordered on one side by the river, and on the other three by endless desolate swamps, that stretched as far as the eye could reach. This strip of land was raised about twenty-five feet above the plain of the surrounding swamps and the river level: indeed it had every appearance of having been made by the hand of man.

“This place has been a wharf,” said Leo, dogmatically.

“Nonsense,” I answered. “Who would be stupid enough to build a wharf in the middle of these dreadful marshes in a country inhabited by savages – that is, if it is inhabited at all?”

“Perhaps it was not always marsh, and perhaps the people were not always savage,” he said drily, looking down the steep bank, for we were standing by the river. “Look there,” he went on, pointing to a spot where the hurricane of the previous night had torn up one of the magnolia trees by the roots, which had grown on the extreme edge of the bank just where it sloped down to the water, and lifted a large cake of earth with them. “Is not that stonework? If not, it is very like it.”

“Nonsense,” I said again, but we clambered down to the spot, and got between the upturned roots and the bank.

“Well?” he said.

But I did not answer this time. I only whistled. For there, laid bare by the removal of the earth, was an undoubted facing of solid stone laid in large blocks and bound together with brown cement, so hard that I could make no impression on it with the file in my shooting-knife. Nor was this all; seeing something projecting through the soil at the bottom of the bared patch of walling, I removed the loose earth with my hands, and revealed a huge stone ring, a foot or more in diameter, and about three inches thick. This fairly staggered me.

“Looks rather like a wharf where good-sized vessels have been moored, does it not, Uncle Horace?” said Leo, with an excited grin.

I tried to say “Nonsense” again, but the word stuck in my throat – the ring spoke for itself. In some past age vessels had been moored there, and this stone wall was undoubtedly the remnant of a solidly constructed wharf. Probably the city to which it had belonged lay buried beneath the swamp behind it.

“Begins to look as though there were something in the story after all, Uncle Horace,” said the exultant Leo; and reflecting on the mysterious negro’s head and the equally mysterious stonework, I made no direct reply.

“A country like Africa,” I said, “is sure to be full of the relics of long dead and forgotten civilisations. Nobody knows the age of the Egyptian civilisation, and very likely it had offshoots. Then there were the Babylonians and the Phoenicians, and the Persians, and all manner of people, all more or less civilised, to say nothing of the Jews whom everybody ‘wants’ nowadays. It is possible that they, or any one of them, may have had colonies or trading stations about here. Remember those buried Persian cities that the consul showed us at Kilwa.”^[8]

“Quite so,” said Leo, “but that is not what you said before.” “Well, what is to be done now?” I asked, turning the conversation.

As no answer was forthcoming we walked to the edge of the swamp, and looked over it. It was apparently boundless, and vast flocks of every sort of waterfowl flew from its recesses, till it was sometimes difficult to see the sky. Now that the sun was getting high it drew thin sickly looking clouds of poisonous vapour from the surface of the marsh and from the scummy pools of stagnant water.

“Two things are clear to me,” I said, addressing my three companions, who stared at this spectacle in dismay: “first, that we can’t go across there” (I pointed to the swamp), “and, secondly, that if we stop here we shall certainly die of fever.”

“That’s as clear as a haystack, sir,” said Job.

“Very well, then; there are two alternatives before us. One is to’bout ship, and try and run for some port in the whaleboat, which would be a sufficiently risky proceeding, and the other to sail or row on up the river, and see where we come to.”

“I don’t know what you are going to do,” said Leo, setting his mouth, “but I am going up that river.”