e most of our so-called prejudices, a good deal of common
sense to recommend it, I marched in boldly after Billali. I found myself
in another apartment, considerably smaller than the anteroom, of which
the walls were entirely hung with rich-looking curtains of the same make
as those over the door, the work, as I subsequently discovered, of the
mutes who sat in the antechamber and wove them in strips, which were
afterwards sewn together. Also, here and there about the room, were
settees of a beautiful black wood of the ebony tribe, inlaid with ivory,
and all over the floor were other tapestries, or rather rugs. At the top
end of this apartment was what appeared to be a recess, also draped with
curtains, through which shone rays of light. There was nobody in the
place except ourselves.

Painfully and slowly old Billali crept up the length of the cave, and
with the most dignified stride that I could command I followed after
him. But I felt that it was more or less of a failure. To begin with, it
is not possible to look dignified when you are following in the wake
of an old man writhing along on his stomach like a snake, and then,
in order to go sufficiently slowly, either I had to keep my leg some
seconds in the air at every step, or else to advance with a full stop
between each stride, like Mary Queen of Scots going to execution in a
play. Billali was not good at crawling, I suppose his years stood in the
way, and our progress up that apartment was a very long affair. I was
immediately behind him, and several times I was sorely tempted to help
him on with a good kick. It is so absurd to advance into the presence of
savage royalty after the fashion of an Irishman driving a pig to market,
for that is what we looked like, and the idea nearly made me burst out
laughing then and there. I had to work off my dangerous tendency to
unseemly merriment by blowing my nose, a proceeding which filled old
Billali with horror, for he looked over his shoulder and made a ghastly
face at me, and I heard him murmur, "Oh, my poor Baboon!"

At last we reached the curtains, and here Billali collapsed flat on to
his stomach, with his hands stretched out before him as though he were
dead, and I, not knowing what to do, began to stare about the place. But
presently I clearly felt that somebody was looking at me from behind the
curtains. I could not see the person, but I could distinctly feel his
or her gaze, and, what is more, it produced a very o