Maqueda

“ Well, I can show a secret road to that idol whence he may be reached and rescued. In my boyhood I, who am called Cat, because I can climb so well, found that road, and when the Fung took me afterward and threw me to the lions, where I got these scars upon my face, by it I escaped. Spare me, and I will show it to you.”
“It is not enough to show the road,” said Maqueda. “Dog, you must save the foreign lord whom you betrayed. If you do not save him you die. ”

“ The Sultan stared at him in astonishment, then answered:
“If I had any weapon (he had thrown down his lance when he took Maqueda by the hand) , certainly one of us should die, O Hog in man’s clothes.”
Then he turned to Maqueda and added, “Child of Kings, I knew these people of yours to be cowardly and treacherous, but is it thus that you suffer them to deal with envoys under a flag of peace?”
“Not so, not so,” she cried. “My uncle Joshua, you disgrace me; you make our people a shame, a hissing, and a reproach. Stand back; let the Sultan of the Fung go free.” ”

“ Here in the dark amongst so many angry spirits, and with hunger gnawing at my bowels, I am a great coward; Joshua himself is not such a coward as I. Let us go out into the light while there is yet time. Let us give ourselves up to the Prince. Perhaps he will be merciful and spare our lives, or at least he will spare yours, and if we die, it will be with the sun shining on us.”
But Maqueda only shook her head, whereon he turned to Orme and went on:
“Lord, would you have the blood of the Child of Kings upon your hands? Is it thus that you repay her for her love? Lead her forth. ”

“ Why should we be, seeing that some of us need wealth, and that our brother, who is as good as dead yonder, owing to the treachery of those who were sent to guard him, has relatives in England who are poor and should be compensated for his loss?”
“Why, indeed?” ejaculated Maqueda. “Listen, now, my friends. In my own name and in that of the Abati people I promised to you as many camel-loads of this gold as you can carry away from Mur, and before the day is done I will show it to you if you dare follow me to where it lies hid.”
“First the work, then the pay,” said Oliver. ”

“ The Abati being such cowards it was quite probable that they would run in their thousands before the onset of a few hundred determined men, and that, if once victory declared itself for the Child of Kings, the bulk of her subjects would return to their allegiance. So we settled on it in preference to surrender, which we knew meant death to ourselves, and for Maqueda a choice between that last grim solution of her troubles and a forced marriage. ”

“ Yield, then, and I will not even slay the Abati; they shall live on and serve the Fung as slaves and minister to the glory of Harmac.”
“It may not be, it may not be!” Maqueda answered, striking the pommel of her saddle with her small hand. “Shall Jehovah whom Solomon, my father, worshipped, Jehovah of all the generations, do homage to an idol shaped by the hands He made? My people are worn out; they have forgot their faith and gone astray, as did Israel in the desert. I know it. It may even happen that the time has come for them to perish, who are no longer warriors, as of old. ”

“ If you had listened to me and to those whom I called in to help us, you might have beaten back the Fung, and remained free for ever. But you were cowards; you would not learn to bear arms like men, you would not even watch your mountain walls, and soon or late the people who refuse to be ready to fight must fall and become the servants of those who are ready.”
And now, my Oliver, I have no more to write, save that I am glad to have endured so many things, and thereby win the joy that is mine to-day. Not yet have I, Maqueda, wished to reign again in Mur, who have found another throne. ”

“ Yet if there is need I will make it, though not before I see my brother alone yonder on the rock, since all this may be but a trick of yours to deliver me to the Fung, among whom I know that you have friends.”
“It is madness; you shall not go,” said Maqueda. “You will fall and be dashed to pieces. I say that you shall not go.”
“Why should he not go, my niece?” interrupted Joshua. “Shadrach is right; we have heard much of the courage of this Gentile. ”

“ Maqueda turned and bade them descend to the courtyard of the gateway, where she said she would join them presently. They rushed off, rejoicing to escape the sight of those burning arrows, one of which had just pierced a man and set his clothes and hair on fire, causing him to leap from the roof in his madness.
At Oliver’s request I ran to the Child of Kings to lead her to some safer place, if it could be found. But she would not stir.
“Let me be, O Adams,” she said. “If I am to die, I will die here. ”

“ But Maqueda would have none of it.
“What!” she exclaimed, “shall I begin a civil war among my people when for aught I know the enemy is at our gates?” adding aside to us, “also, how can these few hundred men, brave though they be, hope to stand against the thousands under the command of Joshua?”
“What, then, would you do?” asked Orme.
“Return to the palace with these Mountaineers, O Oliver, and by help of that garrison, hold it against all enemies.”
“Very well,” he replied. “To those who are quite lost one road is as good as another; they must trust to the stars to guide them.” ”

“ From every part of the palace, the Mountaineers, men and officers together, rushed down to the gateway. In a minute, with the single exception of Japhet, we four and Maqueda were left alone upon the roof, where we stood overwhelmed, not knowing what to do. We heard the drawbridge fall; we heard the great doors burst open beneath the pressure of a mob of men; we heard a coarse voice—I thought it was that of Joshua—yell:
“Kill whom you will, my children, but death to him who harms the Child of Kings. She is my spoil!” ”

“ What does she say? About five hundred? Well, then, let her attack Harmac at once. The outer and inner gates are down; the Fung think they have raised the devil and will run. She can inflict a defeat on them from which they will not recover for years, only it must be done at once, before they get their nerve again, for, after all, they are more frightened than hurt.”
Maqueda listened to this advice intently.
“It is to my liking; it is very good,” she said in her quaint archaic Arabic when I had finished translating. “But I must consult my Council. Where is my uncle, the prince Joshua?” ”

“ Only three miles away, near to the mouth of the pass, are encamped five hundred men of my own people, the Mountaineers, who hate Prince Joshua and his following. Fly to them, O Walda Nagasta, for they will cleave to you and listen to me whom you have made a chief among them. Afterwards you can act as may seem wisest.”
Maqueda looked at Oliver questioningly.
“I think that is good advice,” he said. “At any rate, we can’t be worse off among the Mountaineers than we are in this undefended place. Tell your women to bring cloaks that we can throw over our heads, and let us go.” ”

“ The point of this bush-like rock was exactly opposite the little plateau on to which we had emerged and distant from it not more than thirty, or at most, forty feet.
“What is that?” asked Maqueda, of Shadrach, pointing in front of her, as she handed back to one of the Mountaineers a cup from which she had been drinking water.
“That, O Walda Nagasta,” he answered, “is nothing else than the back of the mighty idol of the Fung, which is shaped like a lion. The great shaft of rock with the bush at the end of it is the tail of the lion. ”

“ There was silence for a while, and then the giant spoke softly: ‘It is good, O Makóma!’ he said. ‘For I too have grown weary. There is no man so great as I, therefore I am all alone. Guard thyself!’ And bending suddenly he seized the hero in his hands and dashed him upon the ground. And lo! instead of death, Makóma had found life, for he sprang to his feet mightier in strength and stature than before, and rushing in he gripped the giant by the waist and wrestled with him. ”

“ Clinging to her finger was a beautiful boy of something under two years of age, who, when he saw Magepa, ran to him and threw his little arms about his legs. The old man lifted the child and kissed him tenderly, saying:
"'It is well that this toddler and I should love one another, Macumazahn, seeing that he is the last of my race. All the other children here are those of the people who have come to live in my shadow.'
"'Where are their fathers?' I asked, patting the little boy who, his mother told me, was named Sinala upon the cheek, an attention that he resented. ”

“ In the year 1344, in the reign of Peter IV. king of Arragon, the island of Madeira, lying in 32 degrees, was discovered, by an Englishman, named Macham, who, sailing from England to Spain with a lady whom he had carried off, was driven to the island by a tempest, and cast anchor in the harbour or bay, now called Machico, after the name of Macham. His mistress being sea-sick, he took her to land, with some of his company, where she died, and the ship drove out to sea. ”

“ The King was generally kind to Mackay, for he was proud to have so clever a white man in his country. But he could not make up his mind to become a Christian. M'tesa's heart had not really changed. His slave-raiding of other tribes might still go on. The horrible butcherings of his people to turn away the dreaded anger of the gods would continue. Mackay felt he must press on with his work. He was slowly opening a road through the jungle of cruelty and the marshes of dread of the gods that made the life of the Baganda people dark and dreadful. ”

“ Richly caparisoned caciques and warriors were present, some seated, and others standing about the chamber, all waiting expectantly for the king to announce the opening of the council.
Macua presently rose to speak, and every eye was fixed upon him with interested attention. When perfect silence prevailed he said:
"I am pleased to witness the presence here at this time of so many nobles and warriors, who have come to engage in important deliberations. I have reason to believe that all of you are inspired by a common thought: that of a mutual defense of our liberties. ”

“ Machen was, at this time, living the literary life, not quite as it was lived by the swish young men who were then breaking into print and whose names appeared in the more sensational evening papers and on court writs, but still, it was the literary life and still—a noble profession.
The Japanese bureau, its cubbyholes and compartments jammed with notes and notebooks and scraps of paper, had yielded up many tales and articles that appeared in this or that journal. Machen had already written The Holy Things, Psychology, Witchcraft, The Rose Garden, The Ceremony, Midsummer and many other. ”

“ Macías (“O Namorado,” the infatuated lover) flourished in the last half of the fourteenth century, in the reign of Peter the Cruel (1350-69) . Of all the trovadores of Galicia, Macías is the most popular. His fame is due to his tragic end, rather than to his merits as a poet. Professor Rennert, [81] who has recently published a monograph of Macías, does not find enough merit in his poems to account for his extraordinary fame. Macías has been extravagantly glorified alike by all the Portuguese and Spanish poets as a perfect model of true love, of love faithful even unto death. ”

“ Then, gliding meanwhile slowly hither and thither in a series of narrow circles and turns and twists, in a kind of slow waltz step, Machenga began a song, the burden of which was the glory, majesty, and power of the king, and the inexpressible wickedness of those who presumptuously dared to entertain evil thoughts of him. ”

“ To say that in our literature Machado de Assis is a figure apart, that he stands with good reason first among our writers of fiction, that he possesses a rare faculty of assimilation and evolution which makes him a writer of the second Romantic generation, always a contemporary, a modern, without on this account having sacrificed anything to the latest literary fashion or copied some brand-new aesthetic, above all conserving his own distinct, singular personality ... ”

“ Macías was a gentleman of the Grand Master's, Don Enrique de Villena. Among the ladies who attended on this nobleman was one with whose beauty our poet became captivated; and neither the seeing her married to another, the reproofs of the Grand Master, nor, in fact, the prison into which he ordered him to be consigned, could conquer his fatal attachment. The husband, fired with wrath, concerted with the alcaide of the tower in which his rival was imprisoned, and found means to dart at him, through a window, the lance he bore, and with it pierced him to the heart. ”

“ IN THE “MAQUIS” 1. AMID the gorges of the Golo the white road wound on and up. The maquis encroached on it, frowned on it shaggily. Once or twice Hugh plunged into the perfumed cover and explored it for a few yards. The landscape lay sunny and still.
On the other side of the road, all strength and joy, the river leapt like a living thing; it charged the boulders, it flashed in foam, it gleamed in green pools. Sometimes he saw peasants with cane-poles tempting the unsophisticated trout. ”

“ Well then, here was Machen in a hot-bed of the occult and the devilish, surrounded by books of all sorts, especially the strange, the weird and the curious. His room in the Clarendon Road held as many books as it could accommodate along with its occupant—the overflow was stacked between the rungs of a ladder on the landing outside. He was busy with notebooks once more, and writing furiously as ever—but in despair rather than the fine frenzy and high spirits of a few years before. For now he was deep in Rabelais and Balzac—and these books cast a spell upon him. ”