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A blazing noontide was succeeded by a calm and peaceful evening. Through many hours I had endeavoured, as far as lay in my power, to assume the command given me, and assisted by a number of quaintly-garbed officials enthusiastic in Omar's cause, I found my office by no means difficult.
Rapidly and pleasantly we accomplished the long journey, re-crossing the treacherous Way of the Thousand Steps without a single mishap, and ascended to the lofty plateau of Omar's kingdom until, high up in the grey morning mist, we saw looming before us with almost spectral indistinctness the gigantic battlements and domes of the City in the Clouds.
After a siege of fourteen months, Alexandria was taken; but it is probably not true that the library was burned by Omar's order. In the disorders of the times, the great collections of books had probably, for the most part, been dispersed and destroyed. Under him the Christian Berbers in Africa were won over to the faith of Islam, and paved the way for its further advance.
As we talked it over the scheme enlarged itself in our riotous fancy. We said it should be not only a book, it should be a library, not only a library, but a literature. It should make good the world's loss through Omar's barbarity at Alexandria; there was no image so grotesque, so extravagant that we did not play with it; and the work so far as he carried it was really done on a colossal scale.
Hate filled the world, filled the space between them the hate of race, the hate of hopeless diversity, the hate of blood; the hate against the man born in the land of lies and of evil from which nothing but misfortune comes to those who are not white. And as she stood, maddened, she heard a whisper near her, the whisper of the dead Omar's voice saying in her ear: "Kill! Kill!"
Let the sacrifice proceed. Prempeh, King of all the Ashantis, has spoken." Next second a poor black wretch was dragged along in Omar's place and the sword fell heavily upon him, while we were both hurried away in charge of a caboocer to the residence of the man who was, according to Omar, one of his mother's bitterest foes.
Then, casting himself upon the mat near us, he began to tell us what had occurred after our flight from Eastbourne, and relate the latest news from the civilised land we had left so many months before. I also told him how we had been enticed away by Kouaga, and the order of the Naya for Omar's assassination. "Much has happened since I returned," Omar observed, when I had concluded.
One of Syde bin Omar's people put it to me very forcibly the other day by saying, "Kitangulé is an arm of Tanganyika!" He had not followed it out; but that Dagara, the father of Rumanyika, should have in his lifetime seriously proposed to deepen the upper part of it, so as to allow canoes to pass from his place to Ujiji, is very strong evidence of the river being large on the Tanganyika side.
Forward we crept cautiously, in obedience to Omar's instructions, but ere a couple of minutes had elapsed it was evident that the watchful ones who had heard the shouting from above and noticed the pursuit had discovered our whereabouts, for just as we had noiselessly passed a huge boulder, a man in white robe and turban sprang upon us from behind.
We came across a man or two working in a dirty white tunic in the fields, and left behind some wretched huts down by a spring. About this time we lost Omar's dog, which was to have been our guard a rather lame lurcher, which thought better of footing it all the way to Marrakesh.
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