At the Queen's Mercy

I am a plain man, and to do a plain man’s work was ever more to my taste than to set down with a clerk’s skill such happenings as have befallen.

Cannibals were they, and over and above their just cause for offence I felt that they had long been tempted to try the flavor of a white-man roast. However, I was not minded to...

On they came, like a swarm of angry bees from a hive; and I saw that they were mostly men of great stature, though mine, I judged, would still overtop the tallest, the which I d...

The next day passed without event of any kind, save the welcome advent of three good meals. I can say, for my part, that no sweet adventure could so well have satisfied my palat...

Lestrade and I looked about us. The face of Lah was still so potently present in my friend’s memory that he seemed hardly conscious of the aspect of this new prison. I am, howev...

On the noonday that followed Astolba’s last visit, our usual meal was not brought to us, but on the hour, a turbaned slave appeared, bearing rich vestments of the barbarous kind...

Heavy still with the fumes of the Queen’s sleeping-potion that the black had brought me, I sat with my head in my hands after Lah’s departure, thinking yet but lamely, on all th...

Though I knew from all that had gone before that change of quarters was little likely to bring me comfort, pleasure, or ease, either of mind or of body, my spirits rose, despite...

Thus it was that Agno and his ministers found me. Again, I may say their coming added no new horror to these last hours. It is the interminable waiting that wears to a thread a...

A man in my state,—may it be reckoned with heavy reckoning against this son of darkness, this foul priest of Hed,—a man, as I say, in my condition of mind and body notes not the...

As a man in a dream, I rose at her behest, and found that little of my old strength had left me. Only my feet and legs prickled as though I walked through nettles, but this in t...

And still the water rose, and still with wide-open eyes, all undismayed, sat Lah, while our swift heart-beats measured off the time,—the all too little time that for us two mean...

We groped our way down the spiral staircase, the Queen and I, and both were silent. Far be it from me to guess the thoughts of the woman at my side; as for my own, I fear that m...

What had befallen during my captivity I shall now relate in the words of my comrade, Gaston Lestrade. It was long after that he thus set forth the matter, and I transcribe it, l...

We were now in the Palace, and the place was besieged. About its walls (and they were thick indeed, or this tale had not been written) a howling mob surged through the day and s...

Now I had gone from Astolba in the full belief that she had dreamed this thing, yet such is the strangeness of life, an hour had not passed by, when I gave fullest credence both...

I would have made a fight for it even then. Had Lestrade and I been alone, I would in truth have done so, but I knew that the sentinel was in easy call of his fellows, and Astol...

From my loophole I had seen it all. From that same post of vantage, I now beheld the arch-traitor Agno come forth at the head of his fawning priests to do homage to his Queen. T...

At first, after the Queen had spoken thus, I answered nothing. The light in her eyes dazzled me, and the new tone of her voice echoed in my heart. But when a second time she bro...

It was near to midnight. I was weary, mind and body, for I had been urging the Queen to tell me plainly of the fate of my friends, and she had pleaded ignorance, and either coul...

How little a man sees of what is before him. A week hence I would have scorned the thought that, once free, I should enter willingly again the City of heathen gods; that monster...