When, with elaborate genuflections and vows of allegiance, the governors of the six principal provinces of the mystic Kingdom had taken leave of Omar, we remained in consultation with the old sage for upwards of another hour. He told us many horrible stories of the Naya's fierce and unrelenting cruelty. It seemed as though during the later years of her reign she had been seized by an insane desire to cause just as much misery and suffering as her predecessors on the Emerald Throne had promoted prosperity and happiness. In every particular her temperament was exactly opposite to the first Naya, the good queen whose memory had, through a thousand years, been revered as that of a goddess.
Goliba explained how, during the past three years, the Great White Queen had suddenly become highly superstitious. This was not surprising, for as far as I could gather the people of Mo had no religion as we understand the term, but their minds were nevertheless filled with ideas relating to supernatural objects, by which they sought to explain the phenomena about them of which the causes were not immediately obvious. He told us that the Naya, preying upon the superstitions of the people, had recently introduced into the country, entirely against the advice of himself and his fellow-councillors, a number of customs, all of which were apparently devised to cause death. He told us that if a great man died his friends never now remained content with the explanation that he died from natural causes. Their minds flew at once to witchcraft. Some one had cast an evil spell upon him, and it was the duty of the friends of the dead man to discover who it was that had had dealings with the powers of darkness. Suspicion fell upon a certain member of the tribe, generally a relative of the deceased, and that suspicion could only be verified by putting the accused to the test of some dreadful ordeal. A favourite ordeal, he said, was to make the suspected person drink a large quantity—a gallon and a half, or more—of a decoction of a bitter and slightly poisonous bark. If vomiting occurred, then a verdict of guilty was passed upon the unfortunate wretch, and no protestations, or even direct proof of his innocence, could save him from the tortures in store for him. The victim was condemned to death, and death was inflicted not swiftly and mercifully, but nearly always with some accompaniment of diabolical torture.
One method was to hack the body of the wretched person to pieces with knives, the most odious mutilations being resorted to. Occasionally the unfortunate creature was tied to a stake while pepper was rubbed into his eyes until the fearful irritation so produced caused blindness. Or, again, the victim was tied hand and foot upon an ant-hill, and left to the agonies of being consumed slowly by the minute aggressors. The most satisfactory death, perhaps, was that when the condemned man was allowed to be his own executioner. He was made much of for an hour or so before the final scene, and was well fed and primed with palm wine. Under the excitement of this mild stimulant he mounted a tree, carrying in his hand a long rope formed of a kind of stringy vine of tough texture. One end of this rope he fastened to a bough, and the other he placed in a running knot over his neck. Then, quite pleased at being the centre of observation of the multitude, even on such a gruesome occasion, the criminal harangued his tribesmen in a great speech, finally declared the justice of his sentence, and leaped into space. Should the rope break, as occasionally happened, then the zeal of the executioner overcame the fear of death of the victim, for he mounted the tree nimbly once more, readjusted the knots, and did his best in the second attempt to avoid the risk of another fiasco.
"And have such pagan customs actually been introduced during my absence in England?" asked Omar astonished.
"They have, alas! O Prince," answered the sage. "The people, taught from childhood to respect every word that falleth from the lips of our Great White Queen, adopted these revolting customs, together with certain other dreadful rites, believing that only by obeying her injunctions can they escape the wrath of the Crocodile-god. As rapidly as fire spreadeth in the forest the customs were adopted in every part of the kingdom, until now the practices I have briefly enumerated are universal."
"But surely my mother could never have devised such horrible suffering out of sheer ill-will towards our people?"
"Alas! she hath," answered the old man. "If thou believest not my words, take each of you one of the cloaks hanging yonder, wrap the Arab haicks around your heads and follow me. Make no sign that ye are strangers, and ye shall witness strange sights amazing."
We all three arose, and quickly arraying ourselves in white cotton burnouses, wrapping the haicks around our heads in the manner of the Arabs—a fashion adopted by some in the City in the Clouds—and pulling them across our faces, so as to partially conceal our features, we went forth with our guide on the tiptoe of expectation.
"What sight, I wonder, are we going to witness?" I whispered in English to Omar, as we walked together along one of the narrow streets in the deep shadow so that we might not be detected.
"I know not," my friend answered, with a heavy sigh. "If what Goliba says is true, and I fear it is, then our land is doomed."