Whither flee? In his present apparel he durst not seek his home, even if he had better news to bring than the slaughter of his father by his own hand. To get his clothing he must retrace his way to that frightful hole in the rock which he had gladly left in the earlier hour of the night. He dreaded the thought of it, but it had to be; the problem being how to find the way thither?
It was fortunate for Yezed that, in his precipitous flight, he had mounted El Barak in mistake for his own horse, and the sagacious animal carried him instinctively to the right spot, halting beneath the entrance of the hollow to which his dead master had ascended so often, especially after successful robberies. “Allah akbar,” sighed poor Yezed, as he got out of his saddle and prepared to reach the black nest. There was the rope inviting him to ascend. It was a horrible nightmare. So much had happened in a few short hours! Could anything worse befall him? Come what might, that hollow must be entered. He drew himself up, entered the cave, struck a light, threw off his disguise, put on his plain garments, fell on his face and wept bitterly. The pelf and the jewels will they revive his father who had fallen by his hand?—The pelf and the jewels—horrid thought! It flashed upon his mind like an inspiration.—Great Allah! Eblis—his father was himself that terrible impersonation,—a murderer! How could he doubt it? Did not everything point to the reality of that fact? “Allah akbar. Yezed is the most miserable of sons,” murmured the unhappy youth.
But hark! Yes, there was a sigh,—and another,—and a groan, and now a hoot,—and then a howl ascending from that unfathomed black mouth of the hollow, which stared at him like the vicious eye of a Cyclops. The blood froze in his veins. Once more a puff of wind, as of a whiff from a monstrous gullet, left him in rayless darkness. But more appalling than the dense obscurity was the faint glimmer of a hazy shimmer which stole up from the deep, a phosphorescent illumining of the sepulchral gloom, just bright enough to make the shades visible. Terror drove Yezed to the verge of madness. Might not at any moment some apparition break out upon him through that animated gap? Seizing a loaded gun near by, Yezed emptied its contents into the outlet. The instantaneous response was a terrific burst of the mountain, which sent Yezed wheeling through the air with fragments of rock as great as pyramids. That he was not crushed was not so much a wonder as that he landed on top of a mountainous pile unhurt. New events threw previous happenings into the shade.
By this time it took a great deal to astonish Yezed, but his position of vantage placed under his survey a somewhat dim panorama, more beautiful than anything he had ever hoped to see this side of Jannat al Naïm. Through the shifting mists of an uncertain gloom the eye swept over a plain of tropic luxuriance on the shore of a lake as placid and limpid as the purest azure. As though ignited by a flash of lightning, sprang a blaze from lamps without number, giving distinctness to rich and noble forms of vegetation, studded here and there by fruit-bearing trees thick with blossom, or loaded with those Hesperian apples which rival sunshine in glow. From the shades of a majestic grove flowed the ineffable notes of the bulbul. Fragrant bowers stood decked with the vine’s exuberant foliage and cumbered with the clusters that produce the golden juice. Sparkling fountains played in the light of the mystic illumination. A lofty arcade, mocking the rainbow by a myriad multicolored lights, glowed like a curved horizon, covering a great stretch of green meadow, and making day for the fish, which swarmed in the transparent water. Underneath the arcaded bow was room enough for armies to pass each other, or to parade in military array.
Indeed the cymbal, fife and timbrel were heard, and a vast multitude of a strange race overflowed the entire plain, moving toward the arcade as the centre of attraction. It was a half-naked mass of brutified humanity, wild and salacious, the sexes intermingling with revolting indecency. At their head strode a ferocious biped, his hair long, straight and matted, his eyes bloodshot, his visage tattooed, his lips dyed,—chin, teeth and cheekbones of the gorilla, and limbs sinewy like the buffalo’s. In his grasp swayed a huge club; his breast was covered by a shield, his shins by plates of bronze, and he remained no secret to Yezed the moment his beastly cry was heard.
“Hear Nimrod the Huntsman speak, children of Sodom! The mighty sons of Anak and those of the Rephaim, the sky-born, are coming to help us build the tower yonder in defiance of Him who has drowned our sires because of their having lived as we do, and because of their refusing to worship Him as thralls. We shall build higher than His mountains, and then scorn His rage. Yes, we shall climb above His clouds, laugh at His floods, and storm His heaven. Who is He to be feared? He seized the power, the winds and the thunderbolt, and treats beings like Himself with cruel outrage.”
The dehumanized masses yelled, leaped, made horrid faces, distorted their bodies, swore blasphemously, and supplemented their blasphemies by such abominable excesses as caused Yezed to turn away his eyes in disgust. Bestial females rivaled with one another in winning their male brutes by intoxicating drinks, which they made them swallow in great quantities, drinking themselves until they reeled with inebriation. Wild dancing and lewd gesticulations were the prelude to the indulgence of nameless vices, and this was the opening of a Saturnalia of lust and riot.
“The Anakim, the Rephaim, make room for the heroes!” thundered Nimrod the Huntsman. Hereupon the Sodomites divided into two parallel lines, leaving a road free to the triumphal arcade, which burned like a vault of fire. Issuing from a shaded avenue, an army of hideous giants, swollen with vanity and bristling with arms of every description, advanced in two separate columns toward the blazing arcade where they were to be received and regaled. Their powerful chests were shielded by plates of bronze; so were their knees and down the shins. They wore hides of beasts, the chief one a lion’s skin. As they came in sight of the immense vault their chief caused them to break up and pass through a series of evolutions to the vociferous acclaim of the drunken multitude. Nimrod was at hand to extend Sodom’s welcome to the warriors.
“Thou mighty leader of the invincible sons of giants, who durst storm heaven to dethrone Him who revels in outrage, we welcome thee and thine, we, the Sodomites, who welcome none, except it be to mutilate or slay the fools who trust our honor. For know, O chief, that in our midst the stranger gets stones to feed his hunger, mud to quench his thirst, and a bed to sleep on, which must fit his length; if he be too long we cut his limbs; if he be too short we stretch them to suit our measure. Force is our law, valor our God, plunder our business, and license our pleasure. What He above loves we hate, and what He hates we love. We injure the innocent, respect no woman’s virtue, roast the brute alive that He may fume and fret, who is our common foe, our tyrant. That you might join us in the work of raising that tower to a height far above His clouds we called you hither. Let Him send another deluge to drown us,—we shall defy His hereafter as we did hitherto, and make His clouds break against the top of that pile. But whatever work be ours to do, let this hour be given to feasting and pleasure, drinking, dancing and loving.”
What Yezed heard next was a myriad shriek of terror. As if the lake had been a caldron of oil, its volume rose in a tremendous flame, heaving toward the clouds, and in its conflagration the shores were soon involved. A general upheaval of rock, brought about by an impelling force from below, in its recoil dropped the bed of the lake deep under its shores, creating a gulf buried in fire. Streams of the consuming element shot up from a hundred cracks, crevices and chasms opened by the disturbance, wiping out whatever had life and breath. Swallowed by the fiery billows were the licentious revellers, no vestige remaining to tell of the illumined Eden, which but a few minutes before had been a scene of unspeakable depravity. The whole dissolved itself into a black smoke, pregnant with deathful odors, like the fetid exhalation that hung over the catastrophe of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yezed alone escaped, and his trembling heart recognized Allah’s justice and mercy. On every side sulphurous damps, thick night and the silence of death enclosed him.