ring her celestial, or infernal, powers to bear upon the
enemy? Again, I could not say, but one fact emerged, namely that she
was as interesting as she was beautiful, and uncommonly clever into the
bargain.

But what a task was this that she had laid upon me, to lead into battle,
with a foe of unascertained strength, a mob of savages probably quite
undisciplined, of whose fighting qualities I knew nothing and whom I had
no opportunity of organising. The affair seemed madness and I could only
hope that luck or destiny would take me through somehow.

To tell the truth, I believed it would, for I had grown almost as
superstitious about Zikali and his Great Medicine as was Hans himself.
Certainly the effect of it upon those captains was very odd, or would
have been had not the explanation come to me in a flash. On the first
night of our meeting, as I have described, I showed this talisman to
Ayesha, as a kind of letter of credentials, and now I could see that
it was she who had arranged all the scene with the captains, or their
tribal magician, in order to get her way about my appointment to the
command.

Everything about her conduct bore this out, even her feigning ignorance
of the existence of the charm and the leaving of it to Hans to
suggest its production, which perhaps she did by influencing his mind
subconsciously. No doubt more or less it fitted in with one of those
nebulous traditions which are so common amongst ancient savage races,
and therefore once shown to her confederate, or confederates, would be
accepted by the common people as a holy sign, after which the rest was
easy.

Such an obvious explanation involved the death of any illusions I might
still cherish about this Arab lady, Ayesha, and it is true that I parted
with them with regret, as we all do when we think we have discovered
something wonderful in the female line. But there it was, and to bother
any more about her, her history and aims, seemed useless.

So dismissing her and all present anxieties from my mind, I began to
look about me and to wonder at the marvellous scene which unfolded
itself before me in the moonlight. That I might see it better, although
I was rather afraid of snakes which might hide among the stones, by
an easy ascent I climbed a mount of ruins and up the broad slope of a
tumbled massive wall, which from its thickness I judged must have been
that of some fort or temple. On the crest of this wall, some seventy or
eighty feet