Генри Хаггард: Heu-Heu

"Go and fetch the rope and return at once."

So they went with a dejected air, for Hans's winged words had gone home, and again they learned that at the end he always got the best of a quarrel. The truth is that they were as brave as men can be, but no Zulu is any good underground and least of all in the dark in a place that he thinks haunted.

"Now, Baas," said Hans, "we will go and look at the picture—that is, unless you are quite sure I am lying and that there is no picture, in which case it is not worth while to take the trouble, and you had better sit here and cut your broken nails until Mavoon and Induka come back with the rope."

"Oh, get on, you poisonous little vermin!" I said, exasperated by his jeers, emphasizing my words with a tremendous kick.

Here, however, I made a great mistake, since I had forgotten that at the moment I lacked boots, and either Hans carried a collection of hard articles in the seat of his filthy trousers or his posterior was of a singularly stonelike nature. In short, I hurt my toes most abominably and him not at all.

"Ah, Baas," said Hans with a sweet smile, "you should remember what your Reverend Father taught me: always to put on your boots before you kick against the thorn pricks. I have a gimlet and some nails in my pistol pocket, Baas, that I was using this morning to mend that box of yours."

Then he bolted incontinently lest I should experiment on his head and see if there were nails in that also, and as he had the only lantern, I was obliged to limp, or rather to hop, after him.

The passage, of which the floor was still worn smooth by thousands of dead feet, went on straight for eight or ten paces and then bent to the right. When we came to this elbow in it I saw a light ahead of me which I could not understand till presently I found myself standing in a kind of pit or funnel—it may have measured some thirty feet across—that rose from the level at which we stood, right through the strata to the mountain–side eighty or a hundred feet above us. What had formed it thus I cannot conceive, but there it was—a funnel, as I have said, in shape exactly like those that are used when beer is poured into barrels or port wine into a decanter, the place on which we were, being, of course, its narrower end. The light that I had seen came, therefore, from the sky, which, now that the tempest had passed away, was clean–washed and beautiful, sown with stars also, for at the moment a dense black cloud remaining from the storm hid the moon, now just past its full.

For a little way, perhaps five–and–twenty feet, the sides of this tunnel were almost sheer, after which they sloped outwards steeply to the mouth of the pit in the mountain flank. One other peculiarity I noticed—namely, that on the western face of the tunnel which, as it chanced, was in front of us as we stood, just where it began to expand, projected a sloping ridge of rock like to the roof of a lean– to shed, which ridge ran right across this face.

"Well, Hans," I said, when I had inspected this strange natural cavity, "where is your picture? I don't see it."

" Wacht een beetje " (that is, "Wait a bit"), "Baas. The moon is climbing up that cloud; presently she will get to the top of it and then you will see the picture, unless someone has rubbed it out since I was young."

I turned to look at the cloud and to witness a sight of which I never have grown tired: the uprising of the glorious African moon out of her secret halls of blackness. Already silver rays of light were shooting across the vastness of the firmament, causing the stars to pale. Then suddenly her bent edge appeared and with extraordinary swiftness grew and grew till the whole splendid orb emerged from a bed of inky vapour and for a while rested on its marge, perfect, wonderful! In an instant our hole was filled with light so strong and clear that by it I could have read a letter.

For a few moments I stood thrilled with the beauty of the scene, and forgetting all else in its contemplation, till Hans said with a hoarse cackle,

"Now turn round, Baas, and look at the pretty picture."

I did so, and followed the line of his outstretched hand, which pointed to that face of the rock with the pent roof that looked towards the east. Next second—my friends, I am not exaggerating—I nearly fell backwards. Have any of you fellows ever had a nightmare in which you dreamed you were in hell and suddenly met the devil tete–a– tete, all by your little selves? At any rate, I have, and there in front of me was the devil, only much worse than fond fancy can paint him even with the brush of the acutest indigestion.

Imagine a monster double life size—that is to say, eleven or twelve feet high—brilliantly portrayed in the best ochres of which these Bushmen have always had the secret, namely, white, red, black, and yellow, and with eyes formed apparently of polished lumps of rock crystal. Imagine this thing as a huge ape to which the biggest gorilla would be but a child, and yet not an ape but a man, and yet not a man, but a fiend.

It was covered with hair like an ape, long gray hair that grew in tufts. It had a great, red, bushy beard like a man; its limbs were tremendous, the arms being of abnormal length like to the arms of a gorilla, but, mark this, it had no fingers, only a great claw where the thumb should be. The rest of the hand was all grown together into one piece like a duck's foot, although what should have been the finger part was flexible and could grip like fingers, as shall be seen.

At least, that is what the picture suggested, though it occurred to me afterwards that it might represent the creature as wearing fingerless gloves such as men in this country use when cutting fences. The feet however, which were certainly shown as bare, were the same; I mean that there were no toes, only one terrible claw where the big toe should be. The carcass was enormous; supposing it to have been drawn from life, the original, I should guess, would have weighed at least thirty stone; the chest was vast, indicating strength, and the paunch beneath wrinkled and protuberant. But—and here came one of the human touches—about its middle the thing wore a moocha or, rather, a hide tied round it by the leg skins, which hide seemed to have been dressed.

So much for the body. Now for the head and face. These I know not how to describe, but I will try. The neck was as that of a bull, and perched horribly on the top of it was quite a small head, which— notwithstanding the great red beard whereof I have spoken that grew upon the chin, and a wide mouth from whose upper jaw projected yellow tusks like to those of a baboon that hung over the lower lip—was curiously feminine in appearance; indeed, that of an old, old she– devil with an aquiline nose. The brow, however, was disproportionate to the rest of the face, being prominent, massive, and not unintellectual, while set deep in it and unnaturally far apart were those awful glaring crystal eyes.

That was not all, for the creature seemed to be laughing cruelly, and the drawing showed by it laughed. One of its feet was set upon the body of a man into which the great claw was driven deep. One of its hands held the head of the man, that evidently it had just twisted from the body. The other hand grasped by the hair a living naked girl badly drawn, as though this detail had not interested the artist, whom apparently it was about to drag away.

"Isn't it a pretty picture, Baas?" sniggered Hans. "Now the Baas will not say that I tell lies, no, not for quite a week."

I stared and stared, then was overcome with faintness and sat down upon the ground.

I see you laughing at me, young man [this was addressed to me, the recorder of the tale] who no doubt have already decided that this drawing was the work of some imaginative Bushman who had gone mad and set down upon the rock the hellish dream of a mind diseased. Of course, that was the conclusion I came to myself next morning, but at the time it did not strike me like that.