e and see him thou slewest;" and the
old creature caught Curtis' coat in her skinny fingers, and led him
away towards the table. We followed.

Presently she stopped and pointed at the brown object seated on the
table. Sir Henry looked, and started back with an exclamation; and no
wonder, for there, quite naked, the head which Curtis' battle-axe had
shorn from the body resting on its knees, was the gaunt corpse of
Twala, the last king of the Kukuanas. Yes, there, the head perched upon
the knees, it sat in all its ugliness, the vertebrae projecting a full
inch above the level of the shrunken flesh of the neck, for all the
world like a black double of Hamilton Tighe.[2] Over the surface of the
corpse there was gathered a thin glassy film, that made its appearance
yet more appalling, for which we were, at the moment, quite unable to
account, till presently we observed that from the roof of the chamber
the water fell steadily, _drip! drop! drip!_ on to the neck of the
corpse, whence it ran down over the entire surface, and finally escaped
into the rock through a tiny hole in the table. Then I guessed what the
film was--_Twala's body was being transformed into a stalactite._

A look at the white forms seated on the stone bench which ran round
that ghastly board confirmed this view. They were human bodies indeed,
or rather they had been human; now they were _stalactites_. This was
the way in which the Kukuana people had from time immemorial preserved
their royal dead. They petrified them. What the exact system might be,
if there was any, beyond the placing of them for a long period of years
under the drip, I never discovered, but there they sat, iced over and
preserved for ever by the siliceous fluid.

Anything more awe-inspiring than the spectacle of this long line of
departed royalties (there were twenty-seven of them, the last being
Ignosi's father), wrapped, each of them, in a shroud of ice-like spar,
through which the features could be dimly discovered, and seated round
that inhospitable board, with Death himself for a host, it is
impossible to imagine. That the practice of thus preserving their kings
must have been an ancient one is evident from the number, which,
allowing for an average reign of fifteen years, supposing that every
king who reigned was placed here--an improbable thing, as some are sure
to have perished in battle far from home--would fix the date of its
commencement at four and a quarter centuries back.