It was an awesome scene and one that oppressed Jeekie very much,
for he murmured to Alan:
"Oh my! Major, family vault child's play to this hole, just like----"
here his comparison came to an end, for the Asika cut it short with a
single glance.
"Sit here in front of me," she said to Alan, "and you, Jeekie, sit at
your lord's side, and be silent till I bid you speak."
Then she crouched down in a heap behind them, threw the cloth or veil
she carried over her head, and in some way that they did not see,
suddenly extinguished the lamp.
Now they were in deep darkness, the darkness of death, and in utter
silence, the silence of the dead. No glimmer of light, and yet to Alan
it seemed as though he could feel the flash of the crystal eyes of
Little Bonsa, and of all the other eyes set in the masks of those
departed men who once had been the husbands of the bloodstained
priestess of the Asiki, till one by one, as she wearied of them, they
were bewitched to madness and to doom. In that utter quiet he thought
even that he could hear them stir within their winding sheets, or it may
have been that the Asika had risen and moved among them on some errand
of her own.
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