and the Kofa Mazuger. The city was agog, for the hum of life rose from its crowded streets and busy market-places, mingling now and then with the ominous roll of the war drums, the twanging of ginkris, the clashing of cymbals, and the shouts of the eager, ever-watchful troops. By the cloudless, milk-white sky I knew it was about noon, and the sun directly overhead poured down mercilessly upon the immense sandy plain which stretched away eastward and northward until it was lost in the misty haze of the distant horizon. Date palms rose in small clusters near the ornamental lake in the centre of the city; in the square spreading alleluba-trees cast their welcome shade, and beautiful gotuias unfolded their large, featherlike leaves above slender and undivided stems, but beyond the city walls there was not a tree, not a blade of grass, not a living thing. Out there all was sun, sand and silence.
“Dost thou reside here always?” I asked, as together we gazed down upon the great white city.
“Yes. Seldom are we in Sokoto itself, for of later years its prosperity hath declined, and the palace is of meagre proportions; indeed, it is now half-ruined and almost deserted. The wealth and industry of the empire is centred here in Kano, for our trade extendeth as far north as Mourkouk, Ghat, and even Tripoli; to the west, not only to Timbuktu, but even to the shores of the great sea; to the east, all over Bornu; and to the south, among the Igbira, the Igbo, and among the pagans and ivory hunters of the Congo.”
“True,” I said, gazing round upon the prosperous capital of one of the most interesting empires in the world. “It is scarcely surprising that my ambitious lord, the Khalifa, should desire to annex the land of the Sultan ’Othman. Even our own cities of Omdurman or Khartoum are not of such extent. How many persons inhabit this, thy palace?”
“In this, the Great Fada, nearly three thousand men and women reside. In the harem alone are four hundred women and six hundred slaves and eunuchs, while the Imperial bodyguard numbers nearly a thousand.”
Glancing below, I saw the palace was enclosed by white walls as high and strong as the outer fortifications. It was built within the great Kasba or fortress, a veritable city within a city.
Turning, our eyes met, and pointing to the distant, sun-baked wilderness, I exclaimed, —
“Away there, the vultures would already have stripped my bones hadst thou not taken compassion upon me.”
“Speak not again of that,” she answered. “Thou wert the only man in whose body the spark of life still burned. It was my duty to rescue thee,” she replied, rather evasively.
“Now that we understand and trust each other, now indeed, that we are friends true and faithful, wilt thou not tell me why thou didst convey me hither unto thine apartment?”
She hesitated, gazing away towards the misty line where sky and desert joined, until suddenly she turned, and looking boldly into my face with her clear, trusting eyes, answered, —
“It was in consequence of something that was revealed.”
“By whom?”
“By thee.”
“What revelation have I made?” I asked, sorely puzzled.
She held her breath, her fingers twitched with nervous excitement, and the colour left her cheeks. She seemed striving to preserve some strange secret, yet, at the same time, half inclined to render me the explanation I sought.
“The astounding truth became unveiled unconsciously,” she said.
“My mind faileth to follow the meanderings of thy words,” I said. “What truth?”
“Behold!” she cried, and hitching the slim fingers of both her hands in the bodice of cream flimsy silk she wore beneath her zouave, she tore it asunder disclosing, not without a blush of modesty, her white chest.
“Behold!” she cried, hoarsely. “What dost thou recognise?”
With both her hands she held the torn garment apart, and, as she did so, my eyes became riveted in abject amazement. Bending, I examined it closely, assuring myself that I was not dreaming.
“Hast thou never seen its counterpart?” she asked, panting breathlessly.
“Yea,” I answered, with bated breath. “Of a verity the coincidence astoundeth me.”
The sight caused me to marvel greatly; I was bewildered, for it conjured up a thought that was horrible. In the exact centre of her delicate chest, immediately above her heaving bosom, was a strange, dark red mark of curious shape, deeply branded into the white flesh, as if at some time or other it had been seared by a red-hot iron. The paleness of the flesh and the firm contour of her bosom rendered the indelible mark the more hideous, but its position and its shape dumbfounded me. The strange blemish constituted an inexplicable mystery.
It was unaccountable, incredible. I stood agape, staring at it with wide-open, wondering eyes, convinced that its discovery was precursory of revelations startling and undreamed-of.
The mark, about the length of the little finger, and perfectly defined, was shaped to represent two serpents with heads facing each other, their writhing bodies intertwined in double curves.
In itself this mystic brand was hideous enough, but to me it had a significance deeper and more amazing, for in the centre of my own chest I bore a mark exactly identical in every detail!
For years; nay, ever since I had known myself, the red scar, not so noticeable upon my brown, sun-tanned skin as upon Azala’s pale, delicate breast, had been one of the mysteries of my life. Vividly I remembered how, in my early youth, in far El-Manäa I had sought an explanation of my parents, but they would never vouchsafe any satisfactory reply. On what occasion, or for what purpose the mysterious brand had been placed upon me I knew not. Vaguely I believed that it had been impressed as a means of identification at my birth, and until this moment had been fully convinced that I alone bore the strangely-shaped device. Judge, then, my abject astonishment to find a similar mark, evidently impressed by the identical seal, upon the breast of the woman who had thus exerted her ingenuity to save my life – the woman whose grace and marvellous beauty had captivated me, the woman who had admitted that she reciprocated my affection.
In that brief moment I remembered well the strange, ambiguous reply that my mother had given me when, as a lad, my natural curiosity had been aroused, —
“Sufficient for thee to know that the Mark of the Asps is upon thee, O my son. Seek not to discover its significance until thou meetest with its exact counterpart. Then strive night and day to learn the truth, for if thou canst elucidate the mystery, thine ears will listen to strange things, and thine eyes will behold wondrous and undreamed-of marvels.”
Since then, twenty long years had elapsed, and I had wandered far and near, in England, in France, in Algeria and across the Great Desert. Both my parents had died with the strange secret still locked in their hearts, for by no amount of ingenious questioning could I succeed in unloosing their tongues. Now, however, my mother’s prophetic utterance and counsel, spoken in our white house on the green hillside, came back vividly to my memory, and I gazed in silence at Azala full of apprehensive thoughts.
My mother had more than once assured me that she knew not its meaning, and that, although she had sought explanation of my father, he had refused to reveal to her more than she had told me, and he, too, had died with the secret resolutely preserved. But the exact counterpart of the brand burnt into my own flesh was now before me. What could be the significance of the two asps? how, indeed, came the daughter of the great Sultan ’Othman, whom none dare approach, to be disfigured the same as myself, a free-booter
