Sheeta

“ He saw Sheeta and his mate with their little family of three; and deeper inland toward the rocky hills, where one might lie up during the heat of the day, in the dense shade of a tangled thicket close under the cool face of an overhanging rock, Tarzan had found the lair of Numa, the lion, and of Sabor, the lioness. Here he had watched them with their little balus—playful creatures, spotted leopard-like. And he had seen the young fawn with Bara, the deer, and with Buto, the rhinoceros, its ungainly little one. Each of the creatures of the jungle had its own—except Tarzan. ”

“ Tarzan sought a hold about the neck of the panther, while the great cat instantly attempted to roll over on its back that it might rip the body of its antagonist to shreds with the terrible talons that armed its hind feet. But this strategy the ape-man had anticipated; and rolling beneath Sheeta as Sheeta rolled, he locked his powerful legs beneath the belly of the panther; then the great cat leaped to its feet again and sought to shake the man-thing from its back; and all the while a mighty arm was tightening about its neck, closing off its wind. ”

“ For several minutes the blacks hesitated; then, at the urging of Rokoff and their chief, they leaped in to finish the dance and the victim; but ere ever another spear touched the brown hide a tawny streak of green-eyed hate and ferocity bounded from the door of the hut in which Tarzan had been imprisoned, and Sheeta, the panther, stood snarling beside his master.
For an instant the blacks and the whites stood transfixed with terror. Their eyes were riveted upon the bared fangs of the jungle cat. ”

“ Never had Tarzan seen the great Atlantic so ominously at peace. He was standing at the edge of the beach gazing out to sea in the direction of the mainland, his mind filled with sorrow and hopelessness, when from the jungle close behind the camp came the uncanny wail of a panther.
There was a familiar note in the weird cry, and almost mechanically Tarzan turned his head and answered. A moment later the tawny figure of Sheeta slunk out into the half light of the beach. There was no moon but the sky was brilliant with stars. Silently the savage brute came to the side of the man. ”

“ After his struggles ceased Tarzan approached, at Jane's suggestion, to wrest the body from the panther and give what remained of it decent human burial; but the great cat rose snarling above its kill, threatening even the master it loved in its savage way, so that rather than kill his friend of the jungle, Tarzan was forced to relinquish his intentions.
All that night Sheeta, the panther, crouched upon the grisly thing that had been Nikolas Rokoff. The bridge of the Kincaid was slippery with blood. ”

“ When she hears what has happened she will start at once on her own hook. She has been unable to see Leo since she left him in the dark cavern, the reason being that I ordered her [17] not to do so, in punishment for leading you and your companions from the magic chamber.”
The queen blew a tiny whistle, and a servant appeared.
“Send Azurma here,” said she, in Spanish.
The servant bowed and retired, and a few minutes later the beautiful Hez girl appeared.
“What is it, O queen?” she asked. “Can I now be permitted to see my future lord and master?”
“You can; but you must first seek him out. ”

“ Daoud had heard of such things happening, of slaves of the Old Man of the Mountain who suddenly rebelled. The methods of the Hashishiyya were not perfect.
He would have to chance it. It was in God's hands now.
"Are you sure he is not dead?" Lorenzo said in a low, awed voice.
"Look for yourself. He breathes. His heart beats."
Lorenzo shook his head. "What is that stuff?"
Daoud pointed to the two Africans, who stood calmly by, awaiting orders. "They know. In the jungle below the great desert, where it is very hot and wet, a body can rot in hours. ”

“ It is sweet to die for those we love!”
It was the doomed girl that spoke, and as she turned her eyes upon the assemblage her face looked more beautiful than ever.
“If you have anything to say, out with it at once,” said the queen. “According to our ancient laws you must die, and our laws must not be broken.”
“I will say this much,” replied Azurma, advancing to the very edge of the steep, rocky slant: “The women of Hez have robbed me of the one I love, and now, as I stand upon the very brink of death, I set my curse upon all who took part in it. ”

“ Thady Shea laid down his bludgeon in front of the dust-white flivver, and began to crank. For almost the first time in his life he had struck a man in cold anger; more terrible than this thought, however, was the acid-like bitterness in his soul.
Just as the engine caught and roared, Shea, rising, saw over his shoulder the string of men pouring in upon him. He had no time to get into his car. With a quick motion he caught up the axe helve; swiftly the foremost men flung themselves upon him, and found him facing them. ”

“ Sheila was too busy with her dream to be very interested in Hypatia’s talk about her clever brother who had just gone to Cambridge: his profound knowledge of history, his intellectual honesty, and his sarcasm poured so liberally on a certain Paley whose Evidences of Christianity he had been forced to study for the Little Go. Slightly bored by the recital of this brother’s deeds and sayings, Sheila began a little to scorn her friend’s sisterly partiality. Even the severe, the rational, the proudly unconventional Hypatia was not immune from that human weakness. ”

“ For his youth and good nature, for his docility, for the irresponsible levity that even the Fairfield atmosphere could not entirely inhibit, and still more for the less definite charm he unconsciously exercised over her, Sheila conceived a liking that trembled sometimes dangerously on the verge of tenderness. She was stirred by his voluntary surrender of his personality into the grasping hands of Hypatia, the high-priestess of a new oracle, and trembled at the thought of his being immolated, a blood sacrifice, upon that godless altar. ”

“ All this while the ancient had been droning something about the beauties of the old flat-bed presses, and the goshly-gorfulness of machine printing. Now Shea became aware of a more personal note in the droning.
“If I was you,” and the ancient chuckled in his dirty white beard, transfixing Thady Shea with his one bright-blue eye, “if I was you, I’d grow whiskers!
“They’s places and places I can’t never go no more without these here whiskers. Yes, they is! I’m a sinful man an’ proud of it; mebbe ye think I’m old, but I can show you young fellers a thing or two, he, he! Grow whiskers, Thady. ”

“ When you are in science you will see everything more clearly.’
‘I shall see that there’s nothing to see at all,’ said Sheila. ‘Isn’t that your fundamental doctrine?’
‘True, matter does not exist, if that’s what you mean,’ said Hypatia. ‘That is perhaps Our Leader’s greatest discovery. God is All-Good, the very Principle of Goodness, and man is His reflection. Sin, disease, and death——’
[220] ‘Exist in the reflection but not in the reflector,’ remarked Sheila. ‘Are your people of the same way of thinking?’
‘Oh no.’ Hypatia shook her head. ”

“ But when they are acknowledgments of the lawgivers, and an exact obedience to the law, and voluntary agreement and bargain with them, strengthening them to the prosecution of their mischiefs, they cannot be free of the imposer's sin. It was the sin of the men of Shechem, and a proof of their heart's inclination to follow Abimelech, that they gave him threescore and ten pieces of silver, enabling him to kill threescore and ten persons, and to hire vain and light persons to follow him, which they paid as an acknowledgment of his usurped power, Judg. ”

“ After the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath had left the god she visited all the fairy forts of Kilmasheogue, and directed the Shee who lived there to be in waiting at the dawn on the summit of the mountain; consequently, when Angus and Caitilin came up the hill, they found the six clans coming to receive them, and with these were the people of the younger Shee, members of the Tuatha da Danaan, tall and beautiful men and women who had descended to the quiet underworld when the pressure of the sons of Milith forced them with their kind enchantments and invincible valour to the country of the gods. ”

“ Compared with the soothing syrup of Aunt Hester’s religion, despair was almost intoxicating: she tasted it eagerly, as though it had been wine. In those days she and Hypatia had echoed each other rapturously enough, agreeing—with what delight—that life was but a dry husk and death a fit ending to a witless scheme. But now Hypatia, with a fatal instinct for novelty, had subsided into the arms of a new religion, a religion that made summary end of all problems by denying their existence. It was this, Sheila divined, that had put that look of assured calm into her eyes. ”

“ Very gently, knowing it was tender from nursing, he caressed her nipple with his fingertips.
"Before I leave tonight I will give you the deerhorn-handled dagger my father gave me," he said softly. "I must go unarmed, so that the long knives will not kill me if they catch me. Keep it for me till I come back." [360]
"I am afraid," she whispered. "When you and Yellow Hair and Woodrow are gone, Black Hawk will know you helped them escape. What will he do to you when you come back?" ”

“ Have sense Sheela; I'll go through Purgatory as quickly as lightning through a gooseberry bush.
Sheela.
There's no use talking to you or giving you advice. I'll leave you.
When Sheela was going out, Maurya let a screech out of her which was heard for a mile on every side of her. Sheela turned round and she saw Maurya in the midst of a flame of fire. Sheela ran as fast as was in her to Father Brian's house, and returned with him running to Maurya's house. But, my grief! the house was burned to the ground, and Maurya was burnt with it; and I am afraid that the [her] poor soul was lost. ”

“ As the blood-quickening boom reverberated through the village, the natives came out from their huts and gathered around the House of the Old Men, where, with bound hands and feet, Sera, the White Man’s wife, sat, with her back to one of the centre-posts. And opposite her, sitting like a native on a mat of kapau, was the burly figure of O’Shea, with the demon of disappointed passion eating away his reason, and a mist of blood swimming before his eyes. ”

“ Seven years later, on the platform of Penny’s Heath station, Sheila discovered a new Hypatia Fairfield: tall, dark, severe, with thoughtful eyes and aggressive chin; by everyday standards a plain young woman, but redeemed from unattractiveness by an air of absorbed interest in some vision of her own. ”

“ Then, before she could scream, she found herself comfortably seated across the great horse, her shoulder resting on his breastplate, his arms around her.
Her only fear was that she might faint at his touch.
And like that they rode into Lucera. Together for all the world to see.
What exquisite irony! She gazed around the bedchamber Daoud had led her to, hardly able to believe her eyes. The big bed with its golden curtains was the same, and so was the window with its pointed arch. This was the very room, the very bed, in which Manfred and she had made love for the last time. ”

“ No one but the Sheik could manage him, and though she knew that he had perfect mastery over the horse, she never lost the feeling of nervousness, a sensation the old Diana had never, never experienced, and she wished to-day that it had been any other horse but Shaitan waiting for him.
She went back to him slowly. "It makes my head ache, to stay in all day. May Gaston not ride with me?" ”

“ But tho this word Seita denotes any God among the Laplanders, yet may we suppose that under that name, especially as it signifies the publick Idoll, they worshipped the same, which the Luhlenses call Tiermes, or Aijeke (i. e.) thunderer, or father, by others named Thor. And by the private Idols they mean’t him, who by the Luhlenses is called Storjunkare, making the difference to consist not in the Gods but their names. The Tornenses rather using a generall appellation, and calling them all Seitas, whereas the Luhlenses call the greater Termes or Aijeke, and the lesser Storjunkar. ”

“ There is a race of people, similar in character to those who live in the Land of Hez, not far from here. Their city is my home for the present, as well as that of Azurma. But come, we had better be moving from here; there is no telling when one of those big turtle spiders might show up. What do you say if you both accompany me to the city of the Naztecs? I’ll guarantee that you will be used well.”
“We will go!” said Queen Olive, suddenly. “It would not do for me to go back to Hez at this late hour. ”

“ Diana slipped off the couch and went to the open doorway. A detachment of men were already waiting for him, and, close by the tent, Shaitan of the ugly temper was biting and fidgeting in the hands of the grooms. She scowled at the beautiful, wicked creature's flat-laid ears and rolling eyes. She would have backed him fearlessly herself if the Sheik had let her, but she was nervous for him every time he rode the vicious beast. ”

“ They soon perceived a light, and the next minute saw a number of the men of Hez approaching, carrying torches.
That our two friends were perceived at the same time was plainly evident, for the strangely attired men uttered exclamations of pleasure, and motioned the pair not to be afraid.
At the same time one of their number called out, in good English:
“Fear not, my friends. No harm shall befall you. We have come in search of you, at the queen’s order. Your friends and companions are safe and sound, and await you.”
“Who in thunder are you?” asked Haypole, stepping forward. ”