I asked what size the land was, and how many people lived in it.  She answered that there were ten “Households,” like this that she knew of, including the big “Household,” where the Queen was, that all the “Households” lived in caves, in places resembling this stretch of raised country, dotted about in a vast extent of swamp, which was only to be threaded by secret paths.  Often the “Households” made war on each other until She sent word that it was to stop, and then they instantly ceased.  That and the fever which they caught in crossing the swamps prevented their numbers from increasing too much.  They had no connection with any other race, indeed none lived near them, or were able to thread the vast swamps.  Once an army from the direction of the great river (presumably the Zambesi) had attempted to attack them, but they got lost in the marshes, and at night, seeing the great balls of fire that move about there, tried to come to them, thinking that they marked the enemy camp, and half of them were drowned.  As for the rest, they soon died of fever and starvation, not a blow being struck at them.  The marshes, she told us, were absolutely impassable except to those who knew the paths, adding, what I could well believe, that we should never have reached this place where we then were had we not been brought thither.

These and many other things we learnt from Ustane during the four days’ pause before our real adventures began, and, as may be imagined, they gave us considerable cause for thought.  The whole thing was exceedingly remarkable, almost incredibly so, indeed, and the oddest part of it was that so far it did more or less correspond to the ancient writing on the sherd.  And now it appeared that there was a mysterious Queen clothed by rumour with dread and wonderful attributes, and commonly known by the impersonal, but, to my mind, rather awesome title of She.  Altogether, I could not make it out, nor could Leo, though of course he was exceedingly triumphant over me because I had persistently mocked at the whole thing.  As for Job, he had long since abandoned any attempt to call his reason his own, and left it to drift upon the sea of circumstance.  Mahomed, the Arab, who was, by the way, treated civilly indeed, but with chilling contempt, by the Amahagger, was, I discovered, in a great fright, though I could not quite make out what he was frightened about.  He would sit crouched up in a corner of the cave all day long, calling upon Allah and the Prophet to protect him.  When I pressed him about it, he said that he was afraid because these people were not men or women at all, but devils, and that this was an enchanted land; and, upon my word, once or twice since then I have been inclined to agree with him.  And so the time went on, till the night of the fourth day after Billali had left, when something happened.