ic, then the Asiki would grow great
again, seeing that they have in such plenty the gold which you have
shown me the white man loves. Yes, they would grow great and from coast
to coast the people should bow at the name of Bonsa and send him their
sons for sacrifice. Perhaps you will live to see that day, Vernoon.
Slave," she added, addressing Jeekie, "set the mask upon your lord's
head, for we come where women are."

Alan objected, but she stamped her foot and said it must be so, having
once worn Little Bonsa, as her people told her he had done, his naked
face might not be seen. So Alan submitted to the hideous head-dress and
they entered the Asika's house by some back entrance.

It was a place with many rooms in it, but they were all remarkable for
extreme simplicity. With a single exception no gilding or gold was to
be seen, although the food vessels were made of this material here as
everywhere. The chambers, including those in which the Asika lived and
slept, were panelled, or rather boarded with cedar wood that was almost
black with age, and their scanty furniture was mostly made of ebony.
They were very insufficiently lighted, like his own room, by means of
barred openings set high in the wall. Indeed gloom and mystery were
the keynotes of this place, amongst the shadows of which handsome,
half-naked servants or priestesses flitted to and fro at their tasks,
or peered at them out of dark corners. The atmosphere seemed heavy
with secret sin; Alan felt that in those rooms unnameable crimes and
cruelties had been committed for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years,
and that the place was yet haunted by the ghosts of them. At any rate it
struck a chill to his healthy blood, more even than had that Hall of the
Dead and of heaped-up golden treasure.

"Does my house please you?" the Asika asked of him.

"Not altogether," he answered, "I think it is dark."

"From the beginning my spirit has ever loved the dark, Vernoon. I think
that it was shaped in some black midnight."

They passed through the chief entrance of the house which had pillars of
woodwork grotesquely carved, down some steps into a walled and roofed-in
yard where the shadows were even more dense than in the house they had
left. Only at one spot was there light flowing down through a hole in
the roof, as it did apparently in that hall where Alan had found the
Asika sitting in state. The light fell on to a pedestal or column made
of gold which was placed