. Soon he will die
of love for me, and then when he is dead, though not before, I may take
another husband, any husband that I choose, and I think that no black
man shall be my lord, who have other, purer blood in me. Vernoon, five
centuries have gone by since an Asika was really wed to a foreign man
who wore a green turban and called himself a son of the Prophet, a man
with a hooked nose and flashing eyes, who reviled our gods until they
slew him, even though he was the beloved of their priestess. She who
went before me also would have married that white man whose face was
like your face, but he fled with Little Bonsa, or rather Little Bonsa
fled with him. So she passed away unwed, and in her place I came."

"How did you come, if she whom you call your mother was not your
mother?" asked Alan.

"What is that to you, white man?" she replied haughtily. "I am here,
as my spirit has been here from the first. Oh! I see you think I lie to
you, come then, come, and I will show you those who from the beginning
have been the husbands of the Asika," and rising from her chair she took
him by the hand.

They went through doors and by long, half-lit passages till they came to
great gates guarded by old priests armed with spears. As they drew
near to these priests the Asika loosed a scarf that she wore over her
breast-plate of gold fish scales, and threw the star-spangled thing over
Alan's head, that even these priests should not see his face. Then she
spoke a word to them and they opened the gates. Here Jeekie evinced
a disposition to remain, remarking to his master that he thought that
place, into which he had never entered, "much too holy for poor nigger
like him."

The Asika asked him what he had said and he explained his sense of
unworthiness in her own tongue.

"Come, fellow," she exclaimed, "to translate my words and to bear
witness that no trick is played upon your lord."

Still Jeekie lingered bashfully, whereon at a sign from her one of the
priests pricked him behind with his great spear, and uttering a low howl
he sprang forward.

The Asika led the way down a passage, which they saw ended in a big hall
lit with lamps. Now they were in it and Alan became aware that they had
entered the treasure house of the Asiki, since here were piled up great
heaps of gold, gold in ingots, gold in nuggets, in stone jars filled
with dust, in vessels plain or embossed with monstrous shapes in
fetishes and in little squares and disc