The Veiled Man
Page 30
French boundary, and continuing through the rocky region ofthe Ihehaonen and across the Djedid Oasis, until one evening, at the_maghrib_ hour, the high white walls and three tall minarets of thedesert city of Zemnou came within view. It was unsafe to take our mennearer, therefore we returned and bivouacked until darkness set in.Then, dressed in the haick and burnouse of the Arab of the plain, thethree headmen with myself, carrying spades concealed beneath our flowingdrapery, approached the town and crept under the shadow of the walls,until we reached the Bab-el-Oued, or principal gate. Guarded by strongwatch-towers on either side, the gate was closed, and silently we crept,anxious and breathless, on over the sand westward until we had countedtwenty paces and reached the second bastion.
Then, after glancing eagerly around to reassure ourselves that we werenot observed, we all five commenced to dig beneath the wall. Discovery,we knew, would mean death. The sand was loose, but full of stones, andfor some time we worked without result. Indeed, I began to fear thatsomeone had already been able to decipher the record and obeyed itsinjunctions, when suddenly the spade of one of my companions strucksomething hard, and he uttered an ejaculation. With one accord weworked with a will, and within ten minutes were unearthing an object ofextraordinary shape.
At first it puzzled us considerably, but at length, when we had clearedthe earth sufficiently to remove it, we made a cursory examination bythe aid of wax tapers, and discovered that it was a kind of stool with asemi-circular seat, supported by six short columns of twisted gold inimitation of serpents, the seat itself being of gold inlaid with manyprecious stones, while the feet consisted of six great yellow topazes,beautifully cut and highly polished, held in the serpents' mouths. Thegold had become dimmed by long contact with the earth, but the gems, aswe rubbed off the dirt that clung to them, gleamed and sparkled in thetapers' fitful rays.
The stool, or throne, was so heavy that it was with difficulty two mendragged it out of the trench, and breathless with anxiety we all lent awilling hand to carry it over the five miles of open desert to where themen were awaiting us. Our arrival was greeted with cheers, but quicklythe strange relic was wrapped in saddlebags and secured upon the back ofa spare horse. At once we set out on the first stage of our returnjourney, reaching In Salah in safety ten days later, and learning withsatisfaction on our arrival that Abdul-Melik had, during our absence,been killed in a skirmish with the French Spahis in the Ahaggar.
Not until I had sent the jewelled seat to England, through an Arabmerchant whom I knew in Algiers, and it was exhibited before a meetingof the Royal Geographical Society, was I aware of its real antiquarianvalue. From the letters sent home by the intrepid Dr Chatteris, andstill preserved in the archives of the Society, it appeared that during1839 Salman, the great Sheikh of Aujila, assembled a formidablefollowing, and proclaiming himself Sultan of Tunis, led an expeditionthrough the country, extorting money from the people by reason ofhorrible tortures and fearful barbarities. While sentencing hisunfortunate victims, he always used a curiously-shaped judgment-seat,which, for ages, had been the property of the Sultans of Sokoto, and itthus became known and dreaded as the Throne of the Great Torture, itonly being used on occasions when he sentenced the unfortunate wretchesto torture for the purpose of extracting from them knowledge of wheretheir wealth was concealed.
Against this fierce rebel the Bey of Tunis was compelled to send a greatexpedition, and after several sanguinary encounters at Sinaun, and inthe Um-el-Cheil, he was utterly routed and killed in his own strongholdat Aujila. Dr Chatteris, in the last letter received from him,mentioned that he had secured the jewelled throne, but that on accountof the superstitions of the Arabs it was an extremely difficult matterto convey it to the coast.
Fearing lest he should lose it, he had apparently buried it, and soonafterwards unfortunately fell into the hands of the Sultan of Borku, whoheld him captive until his death.
Khadidja is still living in Ideles, where she is happily married to theyounger son of the Governor, but in the seclusion of her harem she isstill in ignorance that, by the curious little souvenir with which sherewarded me, she added to England's national collection of antiquities avaluable and highly interesting relic.
Visitors to the British Museum will experience but little difficulty infinding it, for in the Oriental section at the present moment one of themost frequently inspected and greatly admired treasures is the quaint,historic, and bejewelled Throne of the Great Torture.
The End.