“We both greet you, O Lord, who seem small but are great, O Chief with a troubled past and with a mighty future, O Beloved of Mameena who has ‘gone down’ but still speaks from beneath, Mameena who was and is of our company.”
At this point it was my turn to shiver and become pale, as any may guess who may have chanced to read the history of Mameena, and the turn of Miss Holmes to watch me with animated interest.
“O Slayer of evil men and beasts!” they went on, in their rich-voiced, monotonous chant, “who, as our magic tells us, are destined to deliver our land from the terrible scourge, we greet you, we bow before you, we acknowledge you as our lord and brother, to whom we vow safety among us and in the desert, to whom we promise a great reward.”
Again they bowed, once, twice, thrice; then stood silent before me with folded arms.
“What on earth are they saying?” asked Scroope. “I could catch a few words”—he knew a little kitchen Zulu—“but not much.”
I told him briefly while the others listened.
“What does Mameena mean?” asked Miss Holmes, with a horrible acuteness. “Is it a woman’s name?”
Hearing her, Harût and Marût bowed as though doing reverence to that name. I am sorry to say that at this point I grew confused, though really there was no reason why I should, and muttered something about a native girl who had made trouble in her day.
Miss Holmes and the other ladies looked at me with amused disbelief, and to my dismay the venerable Harût turned to Miss Holmes, and with his inevitable bow, said in broken English:
“Mameena very beautiful woman, perhaps more beautiful than you, lady. Mameena love the white lord Macumazana. She love him while she live, she love him now she dead. She tell me so again just now. You ask white lord tell you pretty story of how he kiss her before she kill herself.”