Lestrade was silent, and the stranger catching at my tone looked from one to the other of us, for a space, in silence also.
Then, as if some inward power thrust from him words he fain would have held back, he burst forth:—
“O men of white countenance! My hour is at hand. Swear by Edba and by Hed to bury me as I have besought, and the place of the woman and of the treasure shall be known to you, and, moreover, the secret way.”
“The woman!” said Lestrade, drawing in his breath quickly.
“The treasure!” I cried, and neither of us thought of the strangeness of such words from the lips of a savage.
Then by Edba and by Hed we swore; for the man’s words had somehow taken hold upon our minds, and afterwards, all-curious, half-believing, for the very strangeness of its telling lured us on, we heard the story of Sagamoso, one time priest of the people of the Walled City, now outcast and slave.
I cannot tell it as he told it there in the African forest, with the rain falling heavily without, and the fire casting strange shadows on the face of the dying man, convulsed now and again by the action of the poison that was eating out his life. But the things that he said are set down in due order, though, as I told you, I am no scribe and cannot cunningly interweave and polish my words as the learned do.
“I am not of this people nor of this place,” said Sagamoso; “my home is many miles hence, and the path is hidden and beset with peril. But two of the people of white countenance like to yours have ever come so far,—one a man old, not so much with years as with weariness and the toil of wanderings; the other, his daughter, straight and slender, and fair above the common lot of woman.
“Him we slaughtered there at the outer gate, as is the law for strangers. The maid was at the Queen’s behest brought to the palace, but whether as the bride of Hed, I know not. Such service rendered to our god is like to be her portion: nevertheless, three moons must wax and wane before the feast, wherefore you who are of her people can yet save her from the death marriage, unless, indeed, Hed be wroth, or Lah, the Queen, set her will to thwart you.
“Yet even so, surely of maids there are many, but of treasure like to that in the secret storehouse of Edba, there is not in the whole world.