say nothing of all that. What she
believed was that the Queen chose a husband from time to time, and as
soon as a female child was born, this husband, who was never again seen,
was put to death. Then the female child grew up and took the place of
the Queen when its mother died, and had been buried in the great caves.
But of these matters none could speak with certainty. Only _She_ was
obeyed throughout the length and breadth of the land, and to question
her command was instant death. She kept a guard, but had no regular
army, and to disobey her was to die.

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_. Alt