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This lady, Walda Nagasta, or Maqueda, who, I think, had also brooded over things, made me an offer I fancy without the knowledge or consent of her Council. 'Help me, she said, 'and I will help you. Save my people, and I will try to save your son. I can pay for your services and those of any whom you may bring with you.
"O, Walda Nagasta, Daughter of Solomon," he said, "we are the tongues of our Sultan Barung, Son of Barung for a hundred generations, and we speak his words to the brave white men who are your guests. Thus says Barung. Like the Fat One whom I have already captured, you white men are heroes. Three of you alone, you held the gate against my army.
"O Walda Nagasta," he said, "hear the words of your servant. Only three miles away, near to the mouth of the pass, are encamped five hundred men of my own people, the Mountaineers, who hate Prince Joshua and his following. Fly to them, O Walda Nagasta, for they will cleave to you and listen to me whom you have made a chief among them. Afterwards you can act as may seem wisest."
"I do not know," she answered, "but wisely they spared the man. Let him be brought in." A door opened, and Shadrach entered, his hands bound behind his back and shackles on his feet. He was a very fearful and much chastened Shadrach, for his eyes rolled and his teeth chattered with terror, as, having prostrated himself to the Walda Nagasta, he wriggled round and tried to kiss Orme's boot.
Moreover, that we had caused their palace to be burned and, greatest crime of all, had seized the sacred person of the Walda Nagasta, Rose of Mur, and dragged her away into the recesses of the underground city, whence she was only rescued by the chance of an accomplice of ours, one Japhet, betraying our hiding-place.
"Farewell, Gentiles," he said, bowing to us in mockery, "we wish you a quick journey to Sheol, or wherever such swine as you may go. Listen, you Orme. I have a message for you from the Walda Nagasta.
"What is that?" asked Maqueda, of Shadrach, pointing in front of her, as she handed back to one of the Mountaineers a cup from which she had been drinking water. "That, O Walda Nagasta," he answered, "is nothing else than the back of the mighty idol of the Fung, which is shaped like a lion. The great shaft of rock with the bush at the end of it is the tail of the lion.
And to think that if it hadn't been for you, by now I should be in process of digestion by a lion, a stinking, mangy, sacred lion!" Next morning I was awakened by Higgs limping into my room in some weird sleeping-suit that he had contrived with the help of Quick. "I say, old fellow," he said, "tell me some more about that girl, Walda Nagasta. What a sweet face she's got, and what pluck!
Nay, I tell you that being a brave and honourable man, although our enemy, he will become ten times more wroth with you than he was before, and exact a vengeance even more terrible. I tell you also, that then you must find another Walda Nagasta to rule over you, since I, Maqueda, will do so no more." "That is impossible," said some one, "you are the last woman of the true blood."
"Yes," I replied; "I forgot to tell you that if we should ever get to Mur, none of you must make love to the Walda Nagasta. She is a kind of holy person, who can only marry into her own family, and to do so might mean that our throats would be cut." "Do you hear that, Oliver?" said the Professor.
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