For an instant my head reeled, and all breath left me, for I knew that a fearful agonising death was nigh; but as Allah willed it, I alighted upon my feet, and finding in the darkness that the floor sloped down, I started running with all my might, gashing myself upon the knives, set upright like teeth, but nevertheless speedily forward, heedless of the pain. Slowly and surely the walls of that strange torture-chamber closed about me with a creaking and groaning horrible to hear, until I found myself squeezed tightly with irresistible force on every side. I held my breath, for upon my chest was a great weight, and I knew that next instant my frame must be crushed to pulp.
Slowly, however, almost imperceptibly, the frightful pressure upon my body began to relax, and ere I realised the welcome truth, I found myself able to breathe again. By dashing forward I had advanced far down the dreaded Throat of Death to a point where the passage began to widen, and by the freshness of the air I now felt that some outlet lay beyond. Therefore, without hesitation, I sped again onward, stumbling over some soft objects on the ground, which I instinctively knew to be the remains of my fellow victims, until a faint grey glimmer of light showed in the distance. The floor still sloped steeply, and by feeling about me, I discovered that the Throat was now simply a natural burrow in the rock.
Without loss of a second I soon gained the outlet, and peered forth, aghast to discover that the tunnel ended abruptly in the face of a bare precipice; and that in the valley some two hundred feet below lay a great heap of sun-bleached bones, the remains of those who had passed through the Throat of Death. Undoubtedly, when the channel became choked with the rotting remains of the victims they were cast forth to the vultures and the wolves.
Eager to escape from the noisome place, I climbed with difficulty down the face of the mountain, and on gaining the valley, quickly recognised, with satisfaction, that I was actually beyond the confines of the accursed Land of Akkar. Truly I had encountered death as a very near neighbour. The high range with their snowy crests were the same as my treacherous guide had pointed out to me, and next day I skirted the lake which, emptying itself by the subterranean river, gave entrance to the mystic land of Nara. Through many weary weeks I travelled hither and thither, ill and half-starved, until at length I fell in with a camel caravan, and travelling with them to Idelès, subsequently rejoined my own tribesmen, who had, by that time, begun to despair of my safety.
Within six moons I made a report of the mysterious land, and all that I had witnessed therein, to the Bureau Arabe, in Algiers, and ere six more moons had waned, the Franks sent an armed expedition to enter and explore the country. Of this expedition I was appointed guide, all past offences of my tribesmen being forgiven; but the soldiers of Nara offering a determined resistance, their country was at once subdued and occupied by the white conquerors. The sacred Scarabaeus was destroyed by dynamite, and the Throat of Death widened until it now forms one of the entrances to the land so long unknown. The dreaded Nara was sent as prisoner down to Senegal, where she still lives in exile; but her wondrous throne still remains in her great white palace—now a barrack of the Spahis and Chasseurs—and the Arab story-tellers in every desert town, from the Atlas to Lake Tsâd, continue to relate weird and wonderful tales of the City of the Golden Tombs and the Evil of the Thousand Eyes.
Chapter Seven.
The Gate of Hell.
Lounging on a bench under the tall date-palms in the market-place of Hamman-el-Enf, I smoked a rank cherbli in dreamy laziness. The day was dying; the blazing African sun sank, flooding the broad Bay of Tunis with its blood-red afterglow, and the giant palms cast their long, straight shadows over the hot, sun-blanched stones. There are no half lights in Northern Africa; all is either glaring brilliance or sombre shadow. Little twilight is there in that land of mosques and marabouts; night follows the death of day with astonishing rapidity. Even while I sat, darkness crept on; the squatting, chattering crowd of white-burnoused Moors and Arabs and red-fezzed negroes had dispersed, and the sunbaked little village seemed almost deserted. Suddenly the white figure of an Arab woman glided slowly and ghost-like from the deep shadow of the ilexes. Like all others of her sex, she was enshrouded in a haick, and the lower portion of her face was hidden by her thick white veil, only a magnificent pair of black sparkling eyes, and a forehead upon which rows of gold sequins tinkled, being visible.