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Title: The voice of El-lil
Author: Robert E. Howard
Illustrator: Donald von Gelb
Release date: August 16, 2026 [eBook #79376]
Language: English
Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1930
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79376
Credits: Greg Weeks and Mary Meehan
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VOICE OF EL-LIL ***
The Voice of El-Lil
By ROBERT E. HOWARD
_In the heart of African Somaliland was an Oriental
city transplanted from the Tigris-Euphrates
valley--a modern tale of ancient Sumeria._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Oriental Stories, October-November, 1930.]
Maskat, like many another port, is a haven for the drifters of many
nations who bring their tribal customs and peculiarities with them.
Turk rubs shoulders with Greek and Arab squabbles with Hindoo. The
tongues of half the Orient resound in the loud smelly bazar. Therefore
it did not seem particularly incongruous to hear, as I leaned on a
bar tended by a smirking Eurasian, the musical notes of a Chinese
gong sound clearly through the lazy hum of native traffic. There was
certainly nothing so startling in those mellow tones that the big
Englishman next me should start and swear and spill his whisky-and-soda
on my sleeve.
He apologized and berated his clumsiness with honest profanity, but
I saw he was shaken. He interested me as his type always does--a
fine upstanding fellow he was, over six feet tall, broad-shouldered,
narrow-hipped, heavy-limbed, the perfect fighting man, brown-faced,
blue-eyed and tawny-haired. His breed is old as Europe, and the man
himself brought to mind vague legendary characters--Hengist, Hereward,
Cerdic--born rovers and fighters of the original Anglo-Saxon stock.
I saw, furthermore, that he was in a mood to talk. I introduced myself,
ordered drinks and waited. My specimen thanked me, muttered to himself,
quaffed his liquor hastily and spoke abruptly:
"You're wondering why a grown man should be so suddenly upset by such
a small thing--well, I admit that damned gong gave me a start. It's
that fool Yotai Lao, bringing his nasty joss sticks and Buddhas into a
decent town--for a half-penny I'd bribe some Moslem fanatic to cut his
yellow throat and sink his confounded gong into the gulf. And I'll tell
you why I hate the thing.
"My name," said my Saxon, "is Bill Kirby. It was in Jibuti on the
Gulf of Aden that I met John Conrad. A slim, keen-eyed young New
Englander he was--professor too, for all his youth. Victim of obsession
also, like most of his kind. He was a student of bugs, and it was a
particular bug that had brought him to the East Coast; or rather,
the hope of the blooming beast, for he never found it. It was almost
uncanny to see the chap work himself into a blaze of enthusiasm when
speaking on his favorite subject. No doubt he could have taught me much
I should know, but insects are not among my enthusiasms, and he talked,
dreamed and thought of little else at first. . .
"Well, we paired off well from the start. He had money and ambitions
and I had a bit of experience and a roving foot. We got together a
small, modest but efficient safari and wandered down into the back
country of Somaliland. Now you'll hear it spoken today that this
country has been exhaustively explored and I can prove that statement
to be a lie. We found things that no white man has ever dreamed of.
"We had trekked for the best part of a month and had gotten into a part
of the country I knew was unknown to the average explorer. The veldt
and thorn forests gave way to what approached real jungle and what
natives we saw were a thick-lipped, low-browed, dog-toothed breed--not
like the Somali at all. We wandered on though, and our porters and
askari began muttering among themselves. Some of the black fellows had
been hobnobbing with them and telling them tales that frightened them
from going on. Our men wouldn't talk to me or Conrad about it, but we
had a camp servant, a half-caste named Selim, and I told him to see
what he could learn. That night he came to my tent. We had pitched camp
in a sort of big glade and had built a thorn boma; for the lions were
raising merry Cain in the bush.
"'Master,' said he in the mongrel English he was so proud of, 'them
black fella he is scaring the porters and askari with bad ju-ju talk.
They be tell about a mighty ju-ju curse on the country in which we go
to, and----'
"He stopped short, turned ashy, and my head jerked up. Out of the dim,
jungle-haunted mazes of the south whispered a haunting voice. Like
the echo of an echo it was, yet strangely distinct, deep, vibrant,
melodious. I stepped from my tent and saw Conrad standing before a
fire, taut and tense as a hunting hound.
"'Did you hear that?' he asked. 'What was it?'
"'A native drum,' I answered--but we both knew I lied. The noise and
chatter of our natives about their cooking-fires had ceased as if they
had all died suddenly.
"We heard nothing more of it that night, but the next morning we found
ourselves deserted. The black boys had decamped with all the luggage
they could lay hand to. We held a council of war, Conrad, Selim and I.
The half-caste was scared pink, but the pride of his white blood kept
him carrying on.
"'What now?' I asked Conrad. 'We've our guns and enough supplies to give
us a sporting chance of reaching the coast.'
"'Listen!' he raised his hand. Out across the bush-country throbbed
again that haunting whisper. 'We'll go on. I'll never rest until I know
what makes that sound. I never heard anything like it in the world
before.'
"'The jungle will pick our bally bones,' I said. He shook his head.
"'Listen!' said he.
"It was like a call. It got into your blood. It drew you as a fakir's
music draws a cobra. I knew it was madness. But I didn't argue. We
cached most of our duffle and started on. Each night we built a thorn
boma and sat inside it while the big cats yowled and grunted outside.
And ever clearer as we worked deeper and deeper in the jungle mazes,
we heard that voice. It was deep, mellow, musical. It made you dream
strange things; it was pregnant with vast age. The lost glories of
antiquity whispered in its booming. It centered in its resonance all
the yearning and mystery of life; all the magic soul of the East. I
awoke in the middle of night to listen to its whispering echoes, and
slept to dream of sky-towering minarets, of long ranks of bowing,
brown-skinned worshippers, of purple-canopied peacock thrones and
thundering golden chariots.
"Conrad had found something at last that rivalled his infernal
bugs in his interest. He didn't talk much; he hunted insects in an
absent-minded way. All day he would seem to be in an attitude of
listening, and when the deep golden notes would roll out across the
jungle, he would tense like a hunting dog on the scent, while into his
eyes would steal a look strange for a civilized professor. By Jove,
it's curious to see some ancient primal influence steal through the
veneer of a cold-blooded scientist's soul and touch the red flow of
life beneath! It was new and strange to Conrad; here was something he
couldn't explain away with his new-fangled, bloodless psychology.
* * * * *
"Well, we wandered on in that mad search--for it's the white man's
curse to go into Hell to satisfy his curiosity. Then in the gray light
of an early dawn the camp was rushed. There was no fight. We were
simply flooded and submerged by numbers. They must have stolen up and
surrounded us on all sides; for the first thing I knew, the camp was
full of fantastic figures and there were half a dozen spears at my
throat. It rasped me terribly to give up without a shot fired, but
there was no bettering it, and I cursed myself for not having kept a
better lookout. We should have expected something of the kind, with
that devilish chiming in the south.
"There were at least a hundred of them, and I got a chill when I looked
at them closely. They weren't black boys and they weren't Arabs. They
were lean men of middle height, light yellowish-brown, with dark eyes
and big noses. They wore no beards and their heads were close-shaven.
They were clad in a sort of tunic, belted at the waist with a wide
leather girdle, and sandals. They also wore a queer kind of iron
helmet, peaked at the top, open in front and coming down nearly to
their shoulders behind and at the sides. They carried big metal-braced
shields, nearly square, and were armed with narrow-bladed spears,
strangely made bows and arrows, and short straight swords such as I had
never seen before--or since.
"They bound Conrad and me hand and foot and they butchered Selim then
and there--cut his throat like a pig while he kicked and howled. A
sickening sight--Conrad nearly fainted and I dare say I looked a bit
pale myself. Then they set out in the direction we had been heading,
making us walk between them, with our hands tied behind our backs and
their spears threatening us. They brought along our scanty dunnage,
but from the way they carried the guns I didn't believe they knew what
those were for. Scarcely a word had been spoken between them and when
I essayed various dialects I only got the prod of a spear-point. Their
silence was a bit ghostly and altogether ghastly. I felt as if we'd
been captured by a band of spooks.
"I didn't know what to make of them. They had the look of the Orient
about them but not the Orient with which I was familiar, if you
understand me. Africa is of the East but not one with it. They looked
no more African than a Chinaman does. This is hard to explain. But
I'll say this: Tokyo is Eastern, and Benares is equally so, but
Benares symbolizes a different, older phase of the Orient, while Pekin
represents still another, and older one. These men were of an Orient
I had never known; they were part of an East older than Persia--older
than Assyria--older than Babylon! I felt it about them like an aura and
I shuddered from the gulfs of Time they symbolized. Yet it fascinated
me, too. Beneath the Gothic arches of an age-old jungle, speared
along by silent Orientals whose type has been forgotten for God knows
how many eons, a man can have fantastic thoughts. I almost wondered
if these fellows were real, or but the ghosts of warriors dead four
thousand years!
"The trees began to thin and the ground sloped upward. At last we
came out upon a sort of cliff and saw a sight that made us gasp. We
were looking into a big valley surrounded entirely by high, steep
cliffs, through which various streams had cut narrow canyons to feed a
good-sized lake in the center of the valley. In the center of that lake
was an island and on that island was a temple and at the farther end of
the lake was a city! No native village of mud and bamboo, either. This
seemed to be of stone, yellowish-brown in color.
"The city was walled and consisted of square-built, flat-topped houses,
some apparently three or four stories high. All the shores of the lake
were in cultivation and the fields were green and flourishing, fed by
artificial ditches. They had a system of irrigation that amazed me. But
the most astonishing thing was the temple on the island.
"I gasped, gaped and blinked. It was the tower of Babel true to life!
Not as tall or as big as I'd imagined it, but some ten tiers high and
sullen and massive just like the pictures, with that same intangible
impression of evil hovering over it.
"Then as we stood there, from that vast pile of masonry there
floated out across the lake that deep resonant booming--close and
clear now--and the very cliffs seemed to quiver with the vibrations
of that music-laden air. I stole a glance at Conrad; he looked all
at sea. He was of that class of scientists who have the universe
classified and pigeon-holed and everything in its proper little
nook. By Jove! It knocks them in a heap to be confronted with the
paradoxical-unexplainable-shouldn't-be more than it does common chaps
like you and me, who haven't much preconceived ideas of things in
general.
"The soldiers took us down a stairway cut into the solid rock of the
cliffs and we went through irrigated fields where shaven-headed men
and dark-eyed women paused in their work to stare curiously at us.
They took us to a big, iron-braced gate where a small body of soldiers
equipped like our captors challenged them, and after a short parley
we were escorted into the city. It was much like any other Eastern
city--men, women and children going to and fro, arguing, buying and
selling. But all in all, it had that same effect of apartness--of vast
antiquity. I couldn't classify the architecture any more than I could
understand the language. The only thing I could think of as I stared at
those squat, square buildings was the huts certain low-caste, mongrel
peoples still build in the valley of the Euphrates in Mesopotamia.
Those huts might be a degraded evolution from the architecture in that
strange African city.
* * * * *
"Our captors took us straight to the largest building in the city, and
while we marched along the streets, we discovered that the houses and
walls were not of stone after all, but a sort of brick. We were taken
into a huge-columned hall before which stood ranks of silent soldiery,
and taken before a dais up which led broad steps. Armed warriors stood
behind and on either side of a throne, a scribe stood beside it, girls
glad in ostrich-plumes lounged on the broad steps, and on the throne
sat a grim-eyed devil who alone of all the men of that fantastic city
wore his hair long. He was black-bearded, wore a sort of crown and had
the haughtiest, cruelest face I ever saw on any man. An Arab sheikh or
Turkish shah was a lamb beside him. He reminded me of some artist's
conception of Belshazzar or the Pharaohs--a king who was more than a
king in his own mind and the eyes of his people--a king who was at once
king and high priest and god.
"Our escort promptly prostrated themselves before him and knocked their
heads on the matting until he spoke a languid word to the scribe and
this personage signed for them to rise. They rose, and the leader began
a long rigmarole to the king, while the scribe scratched away like mad
on a clay tablet and Conrad and I stood there like a pair of blooming
gaping jackasses, wondering what it was all about. Then I heard a word
repeated continually, and each time he spoke it, he indicated us. The
word sounded like 'Akkaddian,' and suddenly my brain reeled with the
possibilities it betokened. It couldn't be--yet it had to be!
"Not wanting to break in on the conversation and maybe lose my bally
head, I said nothing, and at last the king gestured and spoke, the
soldiers bowed again and seizing us, hustled us roughly from the royal
presence into a columned corridor, across a huge chamber and into a
small cell where they thrust us and locked the door. There was only a
heavy bench and one window, closely barred.
"'My heavens, Bill,' exclaimed Conrad, 'who could have imagined
anything equal to this? It's like a nightmare--or a tale from _The
Arabian Nights_! Where are we? Who are these people?'
"'You won't believe me,' I said, 'but--you've read of the ancient empire of
Sumeria?'
"'Certainly; it flourished in Mesopotamia some four thousand years
ago. But what--by Jove!' he broke off, staring at me wide-eyed as the
connection struck him.
"'I leave it to you what the descendants of an Asia-Minor kingdom
are doing in East Africa,' I said, feeling for my pipe, 'but it must
be--the Sumerians built their cities of sun-dried brick. I saw men
making bricks and stacking them up to dry along the lake shore. The mud
is remarkably like that you find in the Tigris and Euphrates valley.
Likely that's why these chaps settled here. The Sumerians wrote on clay
tablets by scratching the surface with a sharp point just as the chap
was doing in the throne room.
"'Then look at their arms, dress and physiognomy. I've seen their art
carved on stone and pottery and wondered if those big noses were part
of their faces or part of their helmets. And look at that temple in the
lake! A small counterpart of the temple reared to the god El-lil in
Nippur--which probably started the myth of the tower of Babel.
"'But the thing that clinches it is the fact that they referred to us
as Akkaddians. Their empire was conquered and subjugated by Sargon of
Akkad in 2750 B.C. If these are descendants of a band who fled their
conqueror, it's natural that, pent in these hinterlands and separated
from the rest of the world, they'd come to call all outlanders
Akkaddians, much as secluded Oriental nations call all Europeans Franks
in memory of Martel's warriors who scuttled them at Tours.'
"'Why do you suppose they haven't been discovered before now?'
"'Well, if any white man's been here before, they took good care he
didn't get out to tell his tale. I doubt if they wander much; probably
think the outside world's overrun with bloodthirsty Akkaddians.'
"At this moment the door of our cell opened to admit a slim young girl,
clad only in a girdle of silk and golden breast-plates. She brought us
food and wine, and I noted how lingeringly she gazed at Conrad. And to
my surprize she spoke to us in fair Somali.
"'Where are we?' I asked her. 'What are they going to do with us? Who
are you?'
"'I am Naluna, the dancer of El-lil,' she answered--and she looked
it--lithe as a she-panther she was. 'I am sorry to see you in this
place; no Akkaddian goes forth from here alive.'
"'Nice friendly sort of chaps,' I grunted, but glad to find some one I
could talk to and understand. 'And what's the name of this city?'
"'This is Eridu,' said she. 'Our ancestors came here many ages ago from
ancient Sumer, many moons to the East. They were driven by a great and
cruel king, Sargon of the Akkaddians--desert people. But our ancestors
would not be slaves like their kin, so they fled, thousands of them in
one great band, and traversed many strange, savage countries before
they came to this land.'
"Beyond that her knowledge was very vague and mixed up with myths and
improbable legends. Conrad and I discussed it afterward, wondering if
the old Sumerians came down the west coast of Arabia and crossed the
Red Sea about where Mocha is now, or if they went over the Isthmus
of Suez and came down on the African side. I'm inclined to the last
opinion. Likely the Egyptians met them as they came out of Asia Minor
and chased them south. Conrad thought they might have made most of the
trip by water, because, as he said, the Persian Gulf ran up something
like a hundred and thirty miles farther than it does now, and Old Eridu
was a seaport town. But just at the moment something else was on my
mind.
"'Where did you learn to speak Somali?' I asked Naluna.
"'When I was little,' she answered, 'I wandered out of the valley and
into the jungle where a band of raiding black men caught me. They sold
me to a tribe who lived near the coast and I spent my childhood among
them. But when I had grown into girlhood I remembered Eridu and one day
I stole a camel and rode across many leagues of veldt and jungle and
so came again to the city of my birth. In all Eridu I alone can speak
a tongue not mine own, except for the black slaves--and they speak not
all, for we cut out their tongues when we capture them. The people of
Eridu go not forth beyond the jungles and they traffic not with the
black peoples who sometimes come against us, except as they take a few
slaves.'
"I asked her why they killed our camp servant and she said that it was
forbidden for blacks and whites to mate in Eridu and the offspring of
such union was not allowed to live. They didn't like the poor beggar's
color.
"Naluna could tell us little of the history of the city since its
founding, outside the events that had happened in her own memory--which
dealt mainly with scattered raids by a cannibalistic tribe living in
the jungles to the south, petty intrigues of court and temple, crop
failures and the like--the scope of a woman's life in the East is much
the same, whether in the palace of Akbar, Cyrus or Asshurbanipal. But
I learned that the ruler's name was Sostoras and that he was both high
priest and king--just as the rulers were in old Sumer, four thousand
years ago. El-lil was their god, who abode in the temple in the lake,
and the deep booming we had heard was, Naluna said, the voice of the
god.
* * * * *
"At last she rose to go, casting a wistful look at Conrad, who sat like a
man in a trance--for once his confounded bugs were clean out of his mind.
"'Well,' said I, 'what d'you think of it, young fella-me-lad?'
"'It's incredible,' said he, shaking his head. 'It's absurd--an
intelligent tribe living here four thousand years and never advancing
beyond their ancestors.'
"'You're stung with the bug of progress,' I told him cynically,
cramming my pipe bowl full of weed. 'You're thinking of the mushroom
growth of your own country. You can't generalize on an Oriental from a
Western viewpoint. What about China's famous long sleep? As for these
chaps, you forget they're no tribe but the tag-end of a civilization
that lasted longer than any has lasted since. They passed the peak of
their progress thousands of years ago. With no intercourse with the
outside world and no new blood to stir them up, these people are slowly
sinking in the scale. I'd wager their culture and art are far inferior
to that of their ancestors.'
"'Then why haven't they lapsed into complete barbarism?'
"'Maybe they have, to all practical purposes,' I answered, beginning
to draw on my old pipe. 'They don't strike me as being quite the
proper thing for off-springs of an ancient and honorable civilization.
But remember they grew slowly and their retrogression is bound to be
equally slow. Sumerian culture was unusually virile. Its influence
is felt in Asia Minor today. The Sumerians had their civilization
when our bloomin' ancestors were scrapping with cave bears and
saber-tooth tigers, so to speak. At least the Aryans hadn't passed
the first milestones on the road to progress, whoever their animal
neighbors were. Old Eridu was a seaport of consequence as early as
6500 B.C. From then to 2750 B.C. is a bit of time for any empire. What
other empire stood as long as the Sumerian? The Akkaddian dynasty
established by Sargon stood two hundred years before it was overthrown
by another Semitic people, the Babylonians, who borrowed their culture
from Akkaddian Sumer just as Rome later stole hers from Greece; the
Elamitish Kassite dynasty supplanted the original Babylonian, the
Assyrian and the Chaldean followed--well, you know the rapid succession
of dynasty on dynasty in Asia Minor, one Semitic people overthrowing
another, until the real conquerors hove in view on the Eastern
horizon--the Aryan Medes and Persians--who were destined to last
scarcely longer than their victims.
"'Compare each fleeting kingdom with the long dreamy reign of the
ancient pre-Semitic Sumerians! We think the Minoan Age of Crete
is a long time back, but the Sumerian empire of Erech was already
beginning to decay before the rising power of Sumerian Nippur, before
the ancestors of the Cretans had emerged from the Neolithic Age. The
Sumerians had something the succeeding Hamites, Semites and Aryans
lacked. They were stable. They grew slowly and if left alone would have
decayed as slowly as these fellows are decaying. Still and all, I note
these chaps have made one advancement--notice their weapons?
"'Old Sumer was in the Bronze Age. The Assyrians were the first to use
iron for anything besides ornaments. But these lads have learned to
work iron--probably a matter of necessity. No copper here-abouts but
plenty of iron ore, I daresay.'
"'But the mystery of Sumer still remains,' Conrad broke in. 'Who are
they? Whence did they come? Some authorities maintain they were of
Dravidian origin, akin to the Basques----'
"'It won't stick, me lad,' said I. 'Even allowing for possible
admixture of Aryan or Turanian blood in the Dravidian descendants, you
can see at a glance these people are not of the same race.'
"'But their language,' Conrad began arguing, which is a fair way to
pass the time while you're waiting to be put in the cooking-pot, but
doesn't prove much except to strengthen your own original ideas.
* * * * *
"Naluna came again about sunset with food, and this time she sat down
by Conrad and watched him eat. Seeing her sitting thus, elbows on knees
and chin on hands, devouring him with her large, lustrous dark eyes,
I said to the professor in English, so she wouldn't understand: 'The
girl's badly smitten with you; play up to her. She's our only chance.'
"He blushed like a blooming school girl. 'I've a fiancée back in the
States.'
"'Blow your fiancée,' I said. 'Is it she that's going to keep the bally
heads on our blightin' shoulders? I tell you this girl's silly over
you. Ask her what they're going to do with us.'
"He did so and Naluna said: 'Your fate lies in the lap of El-lil.'
"'And the brain of Sostoras,' I muttered. 'Naluna, what was done with the
guns that were taken from us?'
"She replied that they were hung in the temple of El-lil as trophies of
victory. None of the Sumerians was aware of their purpose. I asked her
if the natives they sometimes fought had never used guns and she said
no. I could easily believe that, seeing that there are many wild tribes
in those hinterlands who've scarcely seen a single white man. But it
seemed incredible that some of the Arabs who've raided back and forth
across Somaliland for a thousand years hadn't stumbled onto Eridu and
shot it up. But it turned out to be true--just one of those peculiar
quirks and back-eddies in events like the wolves and wildcats you still
find in New York state, or those queer pre-Aryan peoples you come onto
in small communities in the hills of Connaught and Galway. I'm certain
that big slave raids had passed within a few miles of Eridu, yet the
Arabs had never found it and impressed on them the meaning of firearms.
"So I told Conrad: 'Play up to her, you chump! If you can persuade her
to slip us a gun, we've a sporting chance.'
"So Conrad took heart and began talking to Naluna in a nervous sort of
manner. Just how he'd have come out, I can't say, for he was little of
the Don Juan, but Naluna snuggled up to him, much to his embarrassment,
listening to his stumbling Somali with her soul in her eyes. Love
blossoms suddenly and unexpectedly in the East.
"However, a peremptory voice outside our cell made Naluna jump half
out of her skin and sent her scurrying, but as she went she pressed
Conrad's hand and whispered something in his ear that we couldn't
understand, but it sounded highly passionate.
"Shortly after she had left, the cell opened again and there stood a
file of silent dark-skinned warriors. A sort of chief, whom the rest
addressed as Gorat, motioned us to come out. Then down a long, dim,
colonnaded corridor we went, in perfect silence except for the soft
scruff of their sandals and the tramp of our boots on the tiling. An
occasional torch flaring on the walls or in a niche of the columns
lighted the way vaguely. At last we came out into the empty streets of
the silent city. No sentry paced the streets or the walls, no lights
showed from inside the flat-topped houses. It was like walking a street
in a ghost city. Whether every night in Eridu was like that or whether
the people kept indoors because it was a special and awesome occasion,
I haven't an idea.
"We went on down the streets toward the lake side of the town. There
we passed through a small gate in the wall--over which, I noted with
a slight shudder, a grinning skull was carved--and found ourselves
outside the city. A broad flight of steps led down to the water's edge
and the spears at our backs guided us down them. There a boat waited, a
strange high-prowed affair whose prototype must have plied the Persian
Gulf in the days or Old Eridu.
"Four black men rested on their oars, and when they opened their
mouths I saw their tongues had been cut out. We were taken into the
boat, our guards got in and we started a strange journey. Out on the
silent lake we moved like a dream, whose silence was broken only by
the low rippling of the long, slim, golden-worked oars through the
water. The stars flecked the deep blue gulf of the lake with silver
points. I looked back and saw the silent city of Eridu sleeping beneath
the stars. I looked ahead and saw the great dark bulk of the temple
loom against the stars. The naked black mutes pulled the shining oars
and the silent warriors sat before and behind us with their spears,
helms and shields. It was like the dream of some fabulous city of
Haroun-al-Raschid's time, or of Sulieman-ben-Daoud's, and I thought
how blooming incongruous Conrad and I looked in that setting, with our
boots and dingy, tattered khakis.
* * * * *
"We landed on the island and I saw it was girdled with masonry--built
up from the water's edge in broad flights of steps which circled
the entire island. The whole seemed older, even, than the city--the
Sumerians must have built it when they first found the valley, before
they began on the city itself.
"We went up the steps, that were worn deep by countless feet, to a huge
set of iron doors in the temple, and here Gorat laid down his spear
and shield, dropped on his belly and knocked his helmed head on the
great sill. Some one must have been watching from a loophole, for from
the top of the tower sounded one deep golden note and the doors swung
silently open to disclose a dim, torch-lighted entrance. Gorat rose and
led the way, we following with those confounded spears pricking our
backs.
"We mounted a flight of stairs and came onto a series of galleries
built on the inside of each tier and winding around and up. Looking
up, it seemed much higher and bigger than it had seemed from without,
and the vague, half-lighted gloom, the silence and the mystery gave me
the shudders. Conrad's face gleamed white in the semi-darkness. The
shadows of past ages crowded in upon us, chaotic and horrific, and I
felt as though the ghosts of all the priests and victims who had walked
those galleries for four thousand years were keeping pace with us. The
vast wings of dark, forgotten gods hovered over that hideous pile of
antiquity.
"We came out on the highest tier. There were three circles of tall
columns, one inside the other--and I want to say that for columns built
of sun-dried brick, these were curiously symmetrical. But there was
none of the grace and open beauty of, say, Greek architecture. This
was grim, sullen, monstrous--something like the Egyptian, not quite
so massive but even more formidable in starkness--an architecture
symbolizing an age when men were still in the dawn-shadows of Creation
and dreamed of monstrous gods.
"Over the inner circle of columns was a curving roof--almost a dome.
How they built it, or how they came to anticipate the Roman builders
by so many ages, I can't say, for it was a startling departure from
the rest of their architectural style, but there it was. And from
this dome-like roof hung a great round shining thing that caught the
starlight in a silver net. I knew then what we had been following for
so many mad miles! It was a great gong--the voice of El-lil. It looked
like jade but I'm not sure to this day. But whatever it was, it was the
symbol on which the faith and cult of the Sumerians hung--the symbol
of the god-head itself. And I know Naluna was right when she told us
that her ancestors brought it with them on that long, grueling trek,
ages ago, when they fled before Sargon's wild riders. And how many eons
before that dim time must it have hung in El-lil's temple in Nippur,
Erech or Old Eridu, booming out its mellow threat or promise over the
dreamy valley of the Euphrates, or across the green foam of the Persian
Gulf!
"They stood us just within the first ring of columns, and out of the
shadows somewhere, looking like a shadow from the past himself, came
old Sostoras, the priest-king of Eridu. He was clad in a long robe of
green, covered with scales like a snake's hide, and it rippled and
shimmered with every step he took. On his head he wore a head-piece of
waving plumes and in his hand he held a long-shafted golden mallet.
"He tapped the gong lightly and golden waves of sound flowed over us
like a wave, suffocating us in its exotic sweetness. And then Naluna
came. I never knew if she came from behind the columns or up through
some trap floor. One instant the space before the gong was bare, the
next she was dancing like a moonbeam on a pool. She was clad in some
light, shimmery stuff that barely veiled her sinuous body and lithe
limbs. And she danced before Sostoras and the Voice of El-lil as women
of her breed had danced in old Sumer four thousand years ago.
"I can't begin to describe that dance. It made me freeze and tremble
and burn inside. I heard Conrad's breath come in gasps and he shivered
like a reed in the wind. From somewhere sounded music, that was old
when Babylon was young, music as elemental as the fire in a tigress's
eyes, and as soulless as an African midnight. And Naluna danced. Her
dancing was a whirl of fire and wind and passion and all elemental
forces. From all basic, primal fundamentals she drew underlying
principles and combined them in one spin-wheel of motion. She narrowed
the universe to a dagger-point of meaning and her flying feet and
shimmering body wove out the mazes of that one central Thought. Her
dancing stunned, exalted, maddened and hypnotized.
[Illustration: _"Her dancing was a whirl of fire and passion."_]
"As she whirled and spun, she was the elemental Essence, one and a
part of all powerful impulses and moving or sleeping powers--the sun,
the moon, the stars, the blind groping of hidden roots to light, the
fire from the furnace, the sparks from the anvil, the breath of the
fawn, the talons of the eagle. Naluna danced, and her dancing was Time
and Eternity, the urge of Creation and the urge of Death; birth and
dissolution in one, age and infancy combined.
"My dazed mind refused to retain more impressions; the girl merged
into a whirling flicker of white fire before my dizzy eyes; then
Sostoras struck one light note on the Voice and she fell at his feet,
a quivering white shadow. The moon was just beginning to glow over the
cliffs to the East.
"The warriors seized Conrad and me, and bound me to one of the outer
columns. Him they dragged to the inner circle and bound to a column
directly in front of the great gong. And I saw Naluna, white in the
growing glow, gaze drawnly at him, then shoot a glance full of meaning
at me, as she faded from sight among the dark sullen columns.
"Old Sostoras made a motion and from the shadows came a wizened black
slave who looked incredibly old. He had the withered features and
vacant stare of a deaf-mute, and the priest-king handed the golden
mallet to him. Then Sostoras fell back and stood beside me, while Gorat
bowed and stepped back a pace and the warriors likewise bowed and
backed still farther away. In fact they seemed most blooming anxious to
get as far away from that sinister ring of columns as they could.
"There was a tense moment of waiting. I looked out across the lake at
the high, sullen cliffs that girt the valley, at the silent city lying
beneath the rising moon. It was like a dead city. The whole scene was
most unreal, as if Conrad and I had been transported to another planet
or back into a dead and forgotten age. Then the black mute struck the
gong.
"At first it was a low, mellow whisper that flowed out from under
the black man's steady mallet. But it swiftly grew in intensity. The
sustained, increasing sound became nerve-racking--it grew unbearable.
It was more than mere sound. The mute evoked a quality of vibration
that entered into every nerve and racked it apart. It grew louder and
louder until I felt that the most desirable thing in the world was
complete deafness, to be like that blank-eyed mute who neither heard
nor felt the perdition of sound he was creating. And yet I saw sweat
beading his ape-like brow. Surely some thunder of that brain-shattering
cataclysm re-echoed in his own soul. El-lil spoke to us and death was
in his voice. Surely, if one of the terrible, black gods of past ages
could speak, he would speak in just such tongue! There was neither
mercy, pity nor weakness in its roar. It was the assurance of a
cannibal god to whom mankind was but a plaything and a puppet to dance
on his string.
"Sound can grow too deep, too shrill or too loud for the human ear to
record. Not so with the Voice of El-lil, which had its creation in some
inhuman age when dark wizards knew how to rack brain, body and soul
apart. Its depth was unbearable, its volume was unbearable, yet ear and
soul were keenly alive to its resonance and did not grow mercifully
numb and dulled. And its terrible sweetness was beyond human endurance;
it suffocated us in a smothering wave of sound that yet was barbed with
golden fangs. I gasped and struggled in physical agony. Behind me I was
aware that even old Sostoras had his hands over his ears, and Gorat
groveled on the floor, grinding his face into the bricks.
"And if it so affected me, who was just within the magic circle of
columns, and those Sumerians who were outside the circle, what was it
doing to Conrad, who was inside the inner ring and beneath that domed
roof that intensified every note?
"Till the day he dies Conrad will never be closer to madness and death
than he was then. He writhed in his bonds like a snake with a broken
back; his face was horribly contorted, his eyes distended, and foam
flecked his livid lips. But in that hell of golden, agonizing sound I
could hear nothing--I could only see his gaping mouth and his frothy,
flaccid lips, loose and writhing like an imbecile's. But I sensed he
was howling like a dying dog.
"Oh, the sacrificial dagger of the Semites was merciful. Even Moloch's
lurid furnace was easier than the death promised by this rending and
ripping vibration that armed sound-waves with venomed talons. I felt
my own brain was brittle as frozen glass. I knew that a few seconds
more of that torture and Conrad's brain would shatter like a crystal
goblet and he would die in the black raving of utter madness. And then
something snapped me back from the mazes I'd gotten into. It was the
fierce grasp of a small hand on mine, behind the column to which I was
bound. I felt a tug at my cords as if a knife edge was being passed
along them, and my hands were free. I felt something pressed into my
hand and a fierce exultation surged through me. I'd recognize the
familiar checkered grip of my Webley .44 in a thousand!
"I acted in a flash that took the whole gang off guard. I lunged away
from the column and dropped the black mute with a bullet through his
brain, wheeled and shot old Sostoras through the belly. He went down,
spewing blood, and I crashed a volley square into the stunned ranks of
the soldiers. At that range I couldn't miss. Three of them dropped and
the rest woke up and scattered like a flock of birds. In a second the
place was empty except for Conrad, Naluna and me, and the men on the
floor. It was like a dream, the echoes from the shots still crashing,
and the acrid scent of powder and blood knifing the air.
* * * * *
"The girl cut Conrad loose and he fell on the floor and yammered like
a dying imbecile. I shook him but he had a wild glare in his eyes
and was frothing like a mad dog, so I dragged him up, shoved an arm
under him and started for the stair. We weren't out of the mess yet,
by a long shot. Down those wide, winding, dark galleries we went,
expecting any minute to be ambushed, but the chaps must have still been
in a bad funk, because we got out of that hellish temple without any
interference. Outside the iron portals Conrad collapsed and I tried to
talk to him, but he could neither hear nor speak. I turned to Naluna.
"'Can you do anything for him?'
"Her eyes flashed in the moonlight. 'I have not defied my people and my
god and betrayed my cult and my race for naught! I stole the weapon of
smoke and flame, and freed you, did I not? I love him and I will not
lose him now!'
"She darted into the temple and was out almost instantly with a jug of
wine. She claimed it had magical powers. I don't believe it. I think
Conrad simply was suffering from a sort of shell-shock from close
proximity to that fearful noise and that lake water would have done
as well as the wine. But Naluna poured some wine between his lips and
emptied some over his head, and soon he groaned and cursed.
"'See!' she cried triumphantly, 'the magic wine has lifted the spell
El-lil put on him!' And she flung her arms around his neck and kissed
him vigorously.
"'My God, Bill,' he groaned, sitting up and holding his head, 'what
kind of a nightmare is this?'
"'Can you walk, old chap?' I asked. 'I think we've stirred up a bloomin'
hornet's nest and we'd best leg it out of here.'
"'I'll try.' He staggered up, Naluna helping him. I heard a sinister
rustle and whispering in the black mouth of the temple and I judged the
warriors and priests inside were working up their nerve to rush us.
We made it down the steps in a great hurry to where lay the boat that
had brought us to the island. Not even the black rowers were there. An
ax and shield lay in it and I seized the ax and knocked holes in the
bottoms of the other boars which were tied near it.
"Meanwhile the big gong had begun to boom out again and Conrad groaned
and writhed as every intonation rasped his raw nerves. It was a warning
note this time and I saw lights flare up in the city and heard a sudden
hum of shouts float out across the lake. Something hissed softly by my
head and slashed into the water. A quick look showed me Gorat standing
in the door of the temple bending his heavy bow. I leaped in, Naluna
helped Conrad in, and we shoved off in a hurry to the accompaniment of
several more shafts from the charming Gorat, one of which took a lock
of hair from Naluna's pretty head.
"I laid to the oars while Naluna steered and Conrad lay on the bottom
of the boat and was violently sick. We saw a fleet of boats put out
from the city, and as they saw us by the gleam of the moon, a yell of
concentrated rage went up that froze the blood in my veins. We were
heading for the opposite end of the lake and had a long start on them,
but in this way we were forced to round the island and we'd scarcely
left it astern when out of some nook leaped a long boat with six
warriors--I saw Gorat in the bows with that confounded bow of his.
"I had no spare cartridges so I laid to it with all my might, and
Conrad, somewhat green in the face, took the shield and rigged it up
in the stern, which was the saving of us, because Gorat hung within
bowshot of us all the way across the lake and he filled that shield so
full of arrows it resembled a blooming porcupine. You'd have thought
they'd had plenty after the slaughter I made among them on the roof,
but they were after us like hounds after a hare.
"We'd a fair start on them but Gorat's five rowers shot his boat
through the water like a race-horse, and when we grounded on the shore,
they weren't half a dozen jumps behind us. As we scrambled out I saw it
was either make a fight of it there and be cut down from the front, or
else be shot like rabbits as we ran. I called to Naluna to run but she
laughed and drew a dagger--she was a man's woman, that girl!
* * * * *
"Gorat and his merry men came surging up to the landing with a clamor
of yells and a swirl of oars--they swarmed over the side like a gang
of bloody pirates and the battle was on! Luck was with Gorat at the
first pass, for I missed him and killed the man behind him. The hammer
snapped on an empty shell and I dropped the Webley and snatched up the
ax just as they closed with us. By Jove! It stirs my blood now to think
of the touch-and-go fury of that fight! Knee-deep in water we met them,
hand to hand, chest to chest!
"Conrad brained one with a stone he picked from the water, and out of
the tail of my eye, as I swung for Gorat's head, I saw Naluna spring
like a she-panther on another, and they went down together in a swirl
of limbs and a flash of steel. Gorat's sword was thrusting for my life,
but I knocked it aside with the ax and he lost his footing and went
down--for the lake bottom was solid stone there, and treacherous as sin.
"One of the warriors lunged in with a spear, but he tripped over the
fellow Conrad had killed, his helmet fell off and I crushed his skull
before he could recover his balance. Gorat was up and coming for me,
and the other was swinging his sword in both hands for a death blow,
but he never struck, for Conrad caught up the spear that had been
dropped, and spitted him from behind, neat as a whistle.
"Gorat's point raked my ribs as he thrust for my heart and I twisted
to one side, and his up-flung arm broke like a rotten stick beneath my
stroke but saved his life. He was game--they were all game or they'd
never have rushed my gun. He sprang in like a blood-mad tiger, hacking
for my head. I ducked and avoided the full force of the blow but
couldn't get away from it altogether and it laid my scalp open in a
three-inch gash, clear to the bone--here's the scar to prove it. Blood
blinded me and I struck back like a wounded lion, blind and terrible,
and by sheer chance I landed squarely. I felt the ax crunch through
metal and bone, the haft splintered in my hand, and there was Gorat
dead at my feet in a horrid welter of blood and brains.
"I shook the blood out of my eyes and looked about for my companions.
Conrad was helping Naluna up and it seemed to me she swayed a little.
There was blood on her bosom but it might have come from the red
dagger she gripped in a hand stained to the wrist. God! it _was_ a bit
sickening, to think of it now. The water we stood in was choked with
corpses and ghastly red. Naluna pointed out across the lake and we saw
Eridu's boats sweeping down on us--a good way off as yet, but coming
swiftly. She led us at a run away from the lake's edge. My wound was
bleeding as only a scalp wound can bleed, but I wasn't weakened as yet.
I shook the blood out of my eyes, saw Naluna stagger as she ran and
tried to put my arm about her to steady her, but she shook me off.
"She was making for the cliffs and we reached them out of breath.
Naluna leaned against Conrad and pointed upward with a shaky hand,
breathing in great, sobbing gasps. I caught her meaning. A rope ladder
led upward. I made her go first with Conrad following. I came after
him, drawing the ladder up behind me. We'd gotten some half-way up when
the boats landed and the warriors raced up the shore, loosing their
arrows as they ran. But we were in the shadow of the cliffs, which made
aim uncertain, and most of the shafts fell short or broke on the face
of the cliff. One stuck in my left arm, but I shook it out and didn't
stop to congratulate the marks-man on his eye.
"Once over the cliff's edge, I jerked the ladder up and tore it loose,
and then turned to see Naluna sway and collapse in Conrad's arms. We
laid her gently on the grass, but a man with half an eye could tell she
was going fast. I wiped the blood from her bosom and stared aghast.
Only a woman with a great love could have made that run and that climb
with such a wound as that girl had under her heart.
"Conrad cradled her head in his lap and tried to falter a few words,
but she weakly put her arms around his neck and drew his face down to
hers.
"'Weep not for me, my lover,' she said, as her voice weakened to a
whisper. 'Thou hast been mine aforetime, as thou shall be again. In the
mud huts of the Old River, before Sumer was, when we tended the flocks,
we were as one. In the palaces of Old Eridu, before the barbarians came
out of the East, we loved each other. Aye, on this very lake have we
floated in past ages, living and loving, thou and I. So weep not, my
lover, for what is one little life when we have known so many and shall
know so many more? And in each of them, thou art mine and I am thine.
"'But thou must not linger. Hark! they clamor for thy blood below. But
since the ladder is destroyed there is but one other way by which they
may come upon the cliffs--the place by which they brought thee into the
valley. Haste! They will return across the lake, scale the cliffs there
and pursue thee, but thou may'st escape them if thou be'st swift. And
when thou hearest the Voice of El-lil, remember, living or dead, Naluna
loves thee with a love greater than any god.
"'But one boon I beg of thee,' she whispered, her heavy lids
drooping like a sleepy child's. 'Press, I beg thee, thy lips
on mine, my master, before the shadows utterly enfold me; then
leave me here and go, and weep not, oh my lover, for what
is--one--little--life--to--us--who--have--loved--in--so--many----'
"Conrad wept like a blithering baby, and so did I, by Judas, and I'll
stamp the lousy brains out of the jackass who twits me for it! We left
her with her arms folded on her bosom and a smile on her lovely face,
and if there's a heaven for Christian folk, she's there with the best
of them, on my oath.
"Well, we reeled away in the moonlight and my wounds were still
bleeding and I was about done in. All that kept me going was a sort
of wild beast instinct to live, I fancy, for if I was ever near to
lying down and dying, it was then. We'd gone perhaps a mile when the
Sumerians played their last ace. I think they'd realized we'd slipped
out of their grasp and had too much start to be caught.
"At any rate, all at once that damnable gong began booming. I felt like
howling like a dog with rabies. This time it was a different sound. I
never saw or heard of a gong before or since whose notes could convey
so many different meanings. This was an insidious call--a luring urge,
yet a peremptory command for us to return. It threatened and promised;
if its attraction had been great before we stood on the tower of
El-lil and felt its full power, now it was almost irresistible. It was
hypnotic. I know now how a bird feels when charmed by a snake and how
the snake himself feels when the fakirs play on their pipes. I can't
begin to make you understand the overpowering magnetism of that call.
It made you want to writhe and tear at the air and run back, blind and
screaming, as a hare runs into a python's jaws. I had to fight it as a
man fights for his soul.
"As for Conrad, it had him in its grip. He halted and rocked like a
drunken man.
"'It's no use,' he mumbled thickly. 'It drags at my heart-strings; it's
fettered my brain and my soul; it embraces all the evil lure of all the
universes. I must go back.'
"And he started staggering back the way we had come--toward that golden
lie floating to us over the jungle. But I thought of the girl Naluna
that had given up her life to save us from that abomination, and a
strange fury gripped me.
"'See here!' I shouted. 'This won't do, you bloody fool! You're off
your bally bean! I won't have it, d'you hear?'
"But he paid no heed, shoving by me with eyes like a man in a trance,
so I let him have it--an honest right hook to the jaw that stretched
him out dead to the world. I slung him over my shoulder and reeled on
my way, and it was nearly an hour before he came to, quite sane and
grateful to me.
"Well, we saw no more of the people of Eridu. Whether they trailed us
at all or not, I haven't an idea. We could have fled no faster than we
did, for we were fleeing the haunting, horrible mellow whisper that
dogged us from the south. We finally made it back to the spot where
we'd cached our dunnage, and then, armed and scantily equipped, we
started the long trek for the coast. Maybe you read or heard something
about two emaciated wanderers being picked up by an elephant-hunting
expedition in the Somaliland back country, dazed and incoherent from
suffering. Well, we were about done for, I'll admit, but we were
perfectly sane. The incoherent part was when we tried to tell our tale
and the blasted idiots wouldn't believe it. They patted our backs and
talked in a soothing tone and poured whisky-and-sodas down us. We soon
shut up, seeing we'd only be branded as liars or lunatics. They got us
back to Jibuti, and both of us had had enough of Africa for a spell. I
took ship for India and Conrad went the other way--couldn't get back to
New England quick enough, where I hope he married that little American
girl and is living happily. A wonderful chap, for all his damnable bugs.
"As for me, I can't hear any sort of a gong today without starting. On
that long, gruelling trek I never breathed easily until we were beyond
the sound of that ghastly Voice. You can't tell what a thing like that
may do to your mind. It plays the very deuce with all rational ideas.
"I still hear that hellish gong in my dreams, sometimes, and see that
silent, hideously ancient city in that nightmare valley. Sometimes
I wonder if it's still calling to me across the years. But that's
nonsense. Anyway, there's the yarn as it stands and if you don't
believe me, I won't blame you at all."
But I prefer to believe Bill Kirby, for I know his breed from Hengist
down, and know him to be like all the rest--truthful, aggressive,
profane, restless, sentimental and straightforward, a true brother of
the roving, fighting, adventuring Sons of Aryan.
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