Her action was, she told me in confidence, a thank-offering to Zomara for her timely rescue from a terrible fate.
CONCLUSION.
Samory, the truculent old Arab, escaped. By some means he eluded us in the dark intricacies of that subterranean way, and groping along in a similar manner to ourselves, he evidently fled to the forest, for he has since collected the scattered remnant of his nomadic bands, and although he has never since troubled us, yet he now and then commits depredations on the borders of the English and French spheres of influence. Ere long he will overstep the bounds, and one Power or another will certainly send a punitive expedition to crush and humiliate him, as they have crushed the arrogant Prempeh of Ashanti.
During many months the means by which the theft of the Treasure of the Sanoms had been effected remained an inscrutable mystery, and it was only on the day previous to my departure from the mysterious land for England, or rather more than six months ago, that the problem was solved and in a manner entirely unexpected.
In preparation for the annual feast in honour of the Crocodile-god I had occasion to go secretly and alone to the submerged Treasure-house, in order to obtain certain jewels which tradition decreed should be worn on that day by the reigning sovereign. I had emptied the lake, unsealed the cover of the well-like aperture, locked the mechanism fatal to intruders, descended and obtained what I sought, when on ascending I was dismayed to find water pouring in upon me in increasing volumes. Upwards I climbed, struggling desperately against the inrushing flood thundering down upon me, and was aghast to find, when I gained the surface, that the sluice-gates that held back the waters feeding the lake had been opened, and that it was rapidly refilling. Instantly it occurred to me to replace the cover, and in breathless haste I succeeded in screwing it down and dashing for my life back to the bank, the water being up to my arm-pits ere I reached it.
When next second I glanced upward to the mound where the mechanism was concealed, I saw standing thereon the wild-looking figure of a woman with her soiled, tattered garments fluttering in the wind.
Her long scraggy arms were raised high above her head, and she was crying aloud to me.
Without a moment's hesitation I dashed forward up the hill to secure the person who had apparently discovered the secret of the Treasure-house, but on approaching her closely I suddenly halted in astonishment.
The wretched, fiendish-looking virago, upon whose face were the most hideous distortions of insanity I had ever witnessed, was none other than the once-powerful tyrannical autocrat, the Great White Queen!