me since Charlemagne,' and he strayed into Latin which I have been told
since was an adaptation of the Epitaph of Charles the Great. 'Sub hoc
conditorio,' he crooned, 'situm est corpus Joannis, magni et orthodoxi
Imperatoris, qui imperium Africanum nobiliter ampliavit, et multos per
annos mundum feliciter rexit.'[1] He must have chosen this epitaph
long ago.

He lay for a few seconds with his head on his arms, his breast heaving
with agony.

'No one will come after me. My race is doomed, and in a little they
will have forgotten my name. I alone could have saved them. Now they
go the way of the rest, and the warriors of John become drudges and
slaves.'

Something clicked in his throat, he gasped and fell forward, and I
thought he was dead. Then he struggled as if to rise. I ran to him,
and with all my strength aided him to his feet.

'Unarm, Eros,' he cried. 'The long day's task is done.' With the
strange power of a dying man he tore off his leopard-skin and belt till
he stood stark as on the night when he had been crowned. From his
pouch he took the Prester's Collar. Then he staggered to the brink of
the chasm where the wall of green water dropped into the dark depth
below.

I watched, fascinated, as with the weak hands of a child he twined the
rubies round his neck and joined the clasp. Then with a last effort he
stood straight up on the brink, his eyes raised to the belt of daylight
from which the water fell. The light caught the great gems and called
fires from them, the flames of the funeral pyre of a king.

Once more his voice, restored for a moment to its old vigour, rang out
through the cave above the din of the cascade. His words were those
which the Keeper had used three nights before. With his hands held
high and the Collar burning on his neck he cried, 'The Snake returns to
the House of its Birth.'

'Come,' he cried to me. 'The Heir of John is going home.' Then he
leapt into the gulf. There was no sound of falling, so great was the
rush of water. He must have been whirled into the open below where the
bridge used to be, and then swept into the underground deeps, where the
Labongo drowses for thirty miles. Far from human quest he sleeps his
last sleep, and perhaps on a fragment of bone washed into a crevice of
rock there may hang the jewels that once gleamed in Sheba's hair.

[1] 'Under this stone is laid the body of John, the great and orthodox
Emperor, who nobly enlarged the