CHAPTER XV--SHOOKS-GEE'S STORY--A CANNIBAL QUEEN

What is called "natural curiosity" in our country, where almost every man is a Paul Pry, is no trait of the Indian's character. Or if he ever does feel such an impulse, it is instantly checked. Curiosity is but the attribute of a squaw, a savage would tell you, but even squaws will try to prevent such a weed from flourishing in their hearts.

That was the reason why neither the father nor the mother of Benee's little lady-love thought of asking him a single question concerning his adventures until he had eaten a hearty meal and had enjoyed a refreshing sleep.

But when Benee sat up at last and quaffed the mate that Weenah had made haste to get him, and just as the day was beginning to merge into the twilight of summer, he began to tell his friends and his love some portion of his wonderful adventures, even from the day when he had bidden the child Weenah a tearful farewell and betaken himself to a wandering life in the woods.

His young life's story was indeed a strange one,

"Wherein he spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field; ... of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven.

----

The while Weenah

"... gave him for his pains a world of sighs. 'T was strange, 't was passing strange, 'T was pitiful, 't was wondrous pitiful: She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished That heaven had made her such a man."

Then when Benee came down to that portion of his long story when first he found the children and their mighty wolf-hound lost in the forest, Weenah and her parents listened with greater interest and intensity than ever.

There was a fire on the rude, low hearth--a fire of wood, of peat, and of moss; for at the great elevation at which this cannibal land is situated the nights are chilly.

It was a fire that gave fitful light as well as heat. It fell on the faces of Benee's listeners, and cast shadows grotesque behind them. It beautified Weenah's face till Benee thought she looked like one of the angels that poor Peggy used to tell him about.

Then he related to them all his suspicions of Peter, but did not actually accuse him of bringing about the abduction of Peggy, to serve some vile and unknown purpose of his own. Next he spoke, yet spoke but lightly, of his long, long march, and the incidents and adventures therewith connected.

There was much, therefore, that Benee had to tell, but there was also much that he had to learn or to be told; and now that he had finished, it was Shooks-gee's turn to take up the story.

I wish I could do justice to this man's language, which was grandly figurative, or to his dramatic way of talking, accompanied as it was with look and gesture that would have elicited applause on any European stage. I cannot do so, therefore shall not try; but the following is the pith of his story.

This Indian's house was on the very outside and most northerly end of the great wild plateau which was the home of these savages and cannibals.

The queen, a terrible monarch, and bloodthirsty in the extreme, used to hold her court and lived on a strange mountain or hill, in the very centre of the rough tree and bush clad plain.

For many, many a long year she had lived here, and to her court Indians came from afar to do her homage, bringing with them cloth of crimson, wine and oil, which they had stolen or captured in warfare from the white men of Madeira valley.

When these presents came, the coca which her courtiers used to chew all day long, and the mate they drank, were for a time--for weeks indeed--discarded for the wine and fire-water of the pale-face.

Fearful were the revels then held on that lone mountain.

The queen was dainty, so too were her fierce courtiers.

When the revels first began she and they could eat the raw or half-roasted flesh of calves and baby-llamas, but when their potations waxed deeper, and appetite began to fail, then the orgies commenced in earnest. Nothing would her majesty eat now--horrible to say--but children, and her courtiers, armed to the teeth, would be sent to scour the plains, to visit the mud huts of her people, and drag therefrom the most beautiful and plump boys or girls procurable.

I will not tell of the fearful and awfully unnatural human sacrifice--the murder of the innocents--that now took place.

Demons could not have been more revolting in their cruelties than were those savage courtiers as they obeyed the queen's behests.

Let me drop the curtain over this portion of the tale. Well, this particular cottage or hut, being on the confines of the country, had not been visited by the queen's fearsome soldiers. But even had they come they would have found that Weenah was far away in the woods, for her father Shooks-gee loved her much. But one evening there came up out of the dark pinewood forest, that lay to the north, a great band of wandering natives.

They were all armed and under the command of one of her majesty's most bloodthirsty and daring chiefs.

Hand to claw this man had fought pumas and jaguars, and slain them, armed only with his two-edged knife.

This savage Rob Roy M'Gregor despised both bow-and-arrow and sling. Only at close quarters would he fight with man or beast, and although he bore the scars and slashes of many a fearful encounter, he had always come off victorious.

Six feet four inches in height was this war-Indian if an inch, and his dress was a picturesque costume of skins with the tails attached. A huge mat of hair, his own, with emu's feathers drooping therefrom, was his only head-gear, but round his neck he wore a chain of polished pebbles, with heavy gold rings, in many of which rubies and diamonds sparkled and shone.

But, ghastly to relate, between each pebble and between the rings of gold and precious stones, was threaded a tanned human ear. More than twenty of these were there.

They had been cut from the heads of white men whom this chief--Kaloomah was his name--had slain, and the rings had been torn from their dead fingers.

This was the band then that had arrived as the sun was going down at the hut of Shooks-gee, and this was their chief.

The latter demanded food for his men, and Shooks-gee, with his trembling wife--Weenah was hidden--made haste to obey, and a great fire was lit out of doors, and flesh of the llama hung over it to roast.

But the strangest thing was this. Seated on a hardy little mule was a sad but beautiful girl--white she was, and unmistakably English. Her eyes were very large and wistful, and she looked at Kaloomah and his band in evident fear and dread, starting and shrinking from the chief whenever he came near her or spoke.

But the daintiest portion of the food was handed to her, and she ate in silence, as one will who eats in fear.

The wild band slept in the bush, a special bed of dry grass being made for the little white queen, as Kaloomah called her, and a savage set to watch her while she slept.

Next morning, when the wild chief and his braves started onwards, Shooks-gee was obliged to march along with them.

Kaloomah had need of him. That was all the explanation vouchsafed.

But this visit to the queen's home had given Weenah's father an insight into court life and usages that he could not otherwise have possessed.

Kaloomah's band bore along with them huge bales of cloth and large boxes of beads. How they had become possessed of these Shooks-gee never knew, and could not guess.

The grim and haughty queen, surrounded by her body-guard of grotesque and hideous warriors with their slashed and fearful faces, and the peleles hanging in the lobes of their ears, was seated at the farther end of a great wall, and on a throne covered with the skins of wild beasts.

All in front the floor was carpeted with crimson, and her majesty sparkled with gold ornaments. A tiara of jewels encircled her brow, and a living snake of immense size, with gray eyes that never closed, formed a girdle round her waist.

In her hand she held a poisoned spear, and at her feet crouched a huge jaguar.

She was a tyrant queen, reigning over a people who, though savage, and cannibals to boot, had never dared to gainsay a word or order she uttered.

Passionate in the extreme, too, she was, and if a slave or subject dared to disobey, a prick from the poisoned spear was the reward, and he or she was dragged out into the bush to writhe and die in terrible agony.

Probably a more frightful woman never reigned as queen, even in cannibal lands.

Kaloomah, on his arrival, bent himself down--nay, but threw himself on his knees and face abjectly before her, as if he were scarcely worthy to be her footstool.

But she greeted his arrival with a smile, and bade him arise.

"Many presents have we brought," he said in the figurative language of the Indian. "Many presents to the beautiful mother of the sun. Cloth of scarlet, of blue, and of green, cloth of rainbow colours, jewels and beads, and the fire-water of the pale-faces."

"Produce me the fire-water of the pale-faces," she returned. "I would drink."

Her voice was husky, hoarse, and horrible.

Kaloomah beckoned to a slave, and in a few minutes a cocoa-nut shell, filled with rum, was held to her lips.

The queen drank, and seemed happier after this. Kaloomah thought he might now venture to broach another subject.

"We have brought your majesty also a little daughter of the pale-faces!"

Then Peggy--for the reader will have guessed it was she--was led trembling in before her, and made to kneel.

But the queen's brows had lowered when she beheld the child's great beauty. She made her advance, and seizing her by the hand, held her at arm's-length.

"Take her away!" she cried. "I can love her not. Put her in prison below ground!"

And the beautiful girl was hurried away.

To be put in prison below the ground meant to be buried alive. But Kaloomah had no intention of obeying the queen on this occasion, and the girl pale-face was conducted to a well-lighted bamboo hut and placed in charge of a woman slave.

This slave looked a heart-broken creature, but seemed kind and good, and now made haste to spread the girl's bed of leaves on a bamboo bench, and to place before her milk of the llama, with much luscious fruit and nuts. She needed little pressing to eat, or drink, or sleep. The poor child had almost ceased to wonder, or even to be afraid of anything.

But now comes the last act in Shooks-gee's strange story.

Two days after the arrival of the warlike band from the far north, Kaloomah had once more presented himself before the queen. He came unannounced this time, and with him were seven fierce-looking soldiers, armed to the teeth with slings and stones, with bows and arrows, and with spears.

The conversation that had ensued was somewhat as follows, being interpreted into our plain and humdrum English:--

_The Queen_. "Why advances my general and slave except on his knees, even as come the frogs?"

_Kaloomah_. "My queen will pardon me. I will not so offend again. Your majesty has reigned long and happily."

_Q_. "True, slave."

She seized the poisoned spear as she spoke, and would have used it freely; but at a word from Kaloomah it was wrenched from her grasp.

_K_. "Your majesty's reign has ended! The old queen must make room for the beautiful daughter of the pale-faces. Yet will your beneficence live in the person of the new queen, and in our hearts--the hearts of those who have fought for you. For we each and all shall taste of your roasted flesh!"

Then, turning quickly to the soldiers, "Seize her and drag her forth!" he cried, "and do your duty speedily."

I must not be too graphic in my description of the scene that followed. But the ex-queen was led to a darksome hut, and there she was speedily despatched.

That night high revelry was held in the royal camp of the cannibals. Many prisoners were killed and roasted, and the feast was a fearful and awful one.

But not a chief was there in all that crowd who did not partake of the flesh of his late queen, while horn trumpets blared and war tom-toms were wildly beaten.

A piece of the fearful flesh was even given to the pale-face girl's attendant, with orders that she must make her charge partake thereof.

The girl was spared this terrible ordeal, however.

But long after midnight the revelry and the wild music went on, then ceased, and all was still.

The unhappy prisoner lay listening till sleep stole down on a star-ray and wafted her off to the land of sweet forgetfulness.

----

Next day, amidst wild unearthly clamour and music, she was led from the tent and seated on the throne. Garments of otter skins and crimson cloth were cast on the throne and draped over the beautiful child. She was encircled with flowers of rarest hue, and emu's feathers were stuck, plume-like, in her bonnie hair.

Meanwhile the trumpets blared more loudly, and the tom-toms were struck with treble force, then all ceased at once, and there was a silence deep as death, as everyone prostrated himself or herself before the newly-made young queen.

Kaloomah rose at last, and advanced with bended back and head towards her, and with an intuitive sense of her new-born dignity she touched him gently on the shoulder and bade him stand erect.

He did so, and then placed in her hand the sceptre of the dead queen--the poison-tipped spear.

Whatever might happen now, the girl knew that she was safe for a time, and her spirits rose in consequence.

This, then, was the story told by Shooks-gee, the father of Benee's child-love.

----

Had Dick Temple himself been there he could no longer have doubted the fidelity of poor Benee.

But there was much to be done, and it would need all the tact and skill of this wily Indian to carry out his plans.

He could trust his father and mother, as he called Weenah's parents, and he now told them that he had come, if possible, to deliver Peggy, or if that were impossible, to hand her a letter that should give her both comfort and hope.

Queen Peggy's apartments on the mountain were cannibalistically regal in their splendour. The principal entrance to her private room was approached by a long avenue of bamboo rails, completely lined with skulls and bones, and the door thereof was also surrounded by the same kind of horrors.

But every one of her subjects was deferential to her, and appeared awe-struck with her beauty.

And now Benee consulted with his parents as to what had best be done.