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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of HE, by Andrew Lang
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: HE
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2008 [EBook #25589]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HE
+
+
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF
+
+'IT'  'KING SOLOMON'S WIVES'  'BESS'
+'MUCH DARKER DAYS'  'MR MORTON'S SUBTLER'
+
+AND OTHER ROMANCES
+
+
+
+LONDON
+LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
+1887
+
+All rights reserved
+
+PRINTED BY
+SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+LONDON
+
+
+
+
+'SHE.'
+
+_TO H. RIDER HAGGARD._
+
+_Not in the waste beyond the swamp and sand,
+The fever-haunted forest and lagoon,
+Mysterious Kor, thy fanes forsaken stand,
+With lonely towers beneath the lonely Moon!
+Not there doth Ayesha linger,--rune by rune
+Spelling the scriptures of a people banned,--
+The world is disenchanted! oversoon
+Shall Europe send her spies through all the land!_
+
+_Nay, not in Kor, but in whatever spot,
+  In fields, or towns, or by the insatiate sea,
+Hearts brood o'er buried Loves and unforgot,
+  Or wreck themselves on some Divine decree,
+Or would o'er-leap the limits of our lot,
+  There in the Tombs and deathless, dwelleth SHE!_
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION.
+
+
+_KOR_, _Jan._ 30, 1887.
+
+_DEAR ALLAN QUATERMAIN,
+
+You, who, with others, have aided so manfully in the Restoration of
+King Romance, know that His Majesty is a Merry Monarch.
+
+You will not think, therefore, that the respectful Liberty we have
+taken with your Wondrous Tale (as Pamela did with the 137th Psalm)
+indicates any lack of Loyalty to our Lady Ayesha.
+
+Her beauties are beyond the reach of danger from Burlesque, nor
+does_ her _form flit across our humble pages.
+
+May you restore to us yet the prize of her perfections, for we, at
+least, can never believe that she wholly perished in the place of the
+Pillar of Fire!
+
+Yours ever,
+
+TWO OF THE AMA LO-GROLLA._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER                                         PAGE
+
+   I. EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION                        1
+
+  II. POLLY'S NARRATIVE                           12
+
+ III. LEONORA'S DISCOVERY                         18
+
+  IV. THE EQUIPMENT                               27
+
+   V. DOWN THE DARK RIVER                         31
+
+  VI. THE ZU                                      41
+
+ VII. AMONG THE LO-GROLLAS                        49
+
+VIII. HE                                          59
+
+  IX. THE POWER OF HE                             76
+
+   X. A BODY IN PAWN                              81
+
+  XI. THE WIZARD UNBOSOMS                         91
+
+ XII. THE WIZARD'S SCHEME                         97
+
+XIII. THE PERILOUS PATH                          103
+
+ XIV. THE MAGIC CHAIR                            113
+
+  XV. THE END                                    116
+
+
+
+
+HE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+As I sat, one evening, idly musing on memories of roers and Boers, and
+contemplating the horns of a weendigo I had shot in Labrador and the
+head of a Moo Cow[1] from Canada, I was roused by a ring at the door
+bell.
+
+      [1]
+      A literary friend to whom I have shown your MS. says a
+      weendigo is Ojibbeway for a cannibal. And why do you shoot
+      poor Moo Cows?--PUBLISHER.
+
+      Mere slip of the pen. Meant a Cow Moose. Literary gent no
+      sportsman.--ED.
+
+      All right.--PUBLISHER.
+
+The hall-porter presently entered, bearing a huge parcel, which had
+just arrived by post. I opened it with all the excitement that an
+unexpected parcel can cause, and murmured, like Thackeray's sailor-man,
+'Claret, perhaps, Mumm, I hope----'
+
+It was a Mummy Case, by Jingo!
+
+This was no common, or museum mummy case. The lid, with the gilded
+mask, was absent, and the under half or lower segment, painted all over
+with hieroglyphics of an unusual type, and _green_ in colour--had
+obviously been used as a cradle for unconscious infancy. A baby had
+slept in the last sleeping-place of the dead! What an opportunity for
+the moralist! But I am not a collector of cradles.
+
+Who had sent it, and why?
+
+The question was settled by an envelope in a feminine hand, which, with
+a cylindrical packet, fell out of the Mummy Case, and contained a
+letter running as follows:--
+
+    _'Lady Betty's, Oxford._
+
+    _'My dear Sir,--You have not forgotten me and my friend Leonora
+    O'Dolite?_
+
+    _'The Mummy Case which encloses this document is the Cradle of
+    her ancient Race._
+
+    _'We are, for reasons you will discover in the accompanying
+    manuscript, about to start for Treasure Island, where, if anywhere
+    in this earth, ready money is to be found on easy terms of personal
+    insecurity.'_
+
+'Oh, confound it,' I cried, 'here's another fiend of a woman sending me
+another manuscript! They are always at it! Wants to get it into a
+high-class magazine, as usual.' And my guess was correct.
+
+The letter went on:--
+
+    '_You, who are so well known, will have no difficulty in getting
+    the editor of the Nineteenth Century, or the Quarterly Review, or
+    Bow Bells, to accept my little contribution. I shall be glad to hear
+    what remuneration I am to expect, and cheques may be forwarded
+    to_
+
+    '_Yours very truly,_
+
+    'MARY MARTIN.
+
+    'P.S.--_The mummy case is very valuable. Please deposit it at the
+    Old Bank, in the High, where it will represent my balance._
+
+    'M. M.'
+
+Now I get letters like this (not usually escorted by a mummy case)
+about thrice a day, and a pretty sum it costs me in stamps to send back
+the rubbish to the amateur authors. But how could I send back a
+manuscript to a lady already on her way to Treasure Island?
+
+Here, perhaps, I should explain how Mary Martin, as she signed herself,
+came to choose _me_ for her literary agent. To be sure, total strangers
+are always sending me their manuscripts, but Mrs. Martin had actually
+been introduced to me years before.
+
+I was staying, as it happened, at one of our university towns, which I
+shall call Oxford, for short--not that that was _really_ its name.
+Walking one day with a niece, a scholar of Lady Betty's Hall, we
+chanced to meet in the High two rather remarkable persons. One of them
+was the very prettiest girl I ever saw in my life. Her noble frame
+marked her as the victor over Girton at lawn-tennis; while her
+_pince-nez_ indicated the student. She reminded me, in the grace of her
+movements, of the Artemis of the Louvre and the Psyche of Naples, while
+her thoughtful expression recalled the celebrated 'Reading Girl' of
+Donatello. Only a reading girl, indeed, could have been, as she was,
+Reader in English Literature on the Churton Collins Foundation.
+
+'Who is she?' I said to my friend, the scholar of Lady Betty's; 'what a
+lovely creature she is!'
+
+'Who, _that_?' she replied with some tartness. 'Well, what you can see
+in _her_, _I_ don't know. That's Leonora O'Dolite, and the lady with
+her is the Lady Superior of Lady Betty's.
+
+'They call them Pretty and the Proctor,' my friend went on, 'as Mrs.
+Martin--Polly they call her too--has been Proctor twice.'[2]
+
+      [2]
+      I say, you know, keep clear of improbabilities! No one was
+      ever old enough to have been Proctor _twice_.--PUBLISHER.
+
+      That's all you know about it. Why, I shall bring in a
+      character old enough to have been Proctor a thousand
+      times.--ED.
+
+Now nobody could have called Polly bewitching. Her age must really have
+been quite thirty-five. I dislike dwelling on this topic, but she was
+short, dumpy, wore blue spectacles, a green umbrella, a red and black
+shawl, worsted mittens and uncompromising boots. She had also the
+ringlets and other attractions with which French Art adorns its ideal
+Englishwoman.
+
+At my request, I was introduced; but presently some thirty professors,
+six or seven senior dons, and a sprinkling of Heads of Houses in red
+and black sleeves came bounding out of University sermon, and gathered
+round the lovely Leonora. The master of St. Catherine's was accompanied
+by a hitherto Unattached student, who manifestly at once fell a victim
+to Leonora's charms.
+
+This youth was of peculiar aspect. He was a member of the nearly
+extinct Boshman tribe of Kokoatinaland. His long silky hair, originally
+black, had been blanched to a permanent and snowy white by failures in
+the attempt to matriculate at Balliol. He was short--not above four
+feet nine--and was tattooed all over his dark but intelligent features.
+
+When he was introduced I had my first opportunity of admiring Leonora's
+extraordinary knowledge of native customs and etiquette.
+
+'Let me present to you,' said the Master of St. Catherine's, 'the
+Boshman chief, Ustani!'
+
+'You 'stonish me!' answered Leonora, with a smile that captivated the
+Boshman. It is a rule among the tribes of Kokoatinaland, and in Africa
+generally, to greet a new acquaintance with a verbal play on his
+name.[3] Owing to our insular ignorance, and the difficulty of the
+task, this courtesy had been omitted at Oxford in Ustani's case, even
+by the Professors of Comparative Philology and the learned Keeper of
+the Museum. From that hour to another which struck later, when _he_
+struck too, Ustani was Leonora's slave.
+
+      [3]
+      Is this _bona fide_?--PUBLISHER.
+
+      All right, see _She_ (p. 145), Ayesha's elegant pun on Holly.
+      It's always done--pun, I mean.--ED.
+
+I had no further opportunity of conversing with Leonora and Polly, nor
+indeed did I ever think of them again, till Polly's letter and mummy
+case recalled them to my memory.
+
+Perhaps for pretty Leonora's sake I did, after all, take up and open
+the vast cylindrical roll of MS.[4] in the mummy case. Dawn found me
+still reading the following record of unparalleled adventure.[5]
+
+      [4]
+      Don't you think it would stand being cut a little?--PUBLISHER.
+
+      We shall see.--ED.
+
+      [5]
+      There is just one thing that puzzles me. Polly and Leonora
+      have gone, no man knows where, and, taking everything into
+      consideration, it may be a good two thousand years before they
+      come back.
+
+      Ought I not, then, to invest, _in my own name_, the
+      princely cheque of the Intelligent Publishers?--ED.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+POLLY'S NARRATIVE.
+
+
+I am the plainest woman in England, bar none.[6] Even in youth I was
+not, strictly speaking, voluptuously lovely. Short, stumpy, with a
+fringe like the thatch of a newly evicted cottage, such was my
+appearance at twenty, and such it remains. Like Cain, I was branded.[7]
+But enough of personalities. I had in youth but one friend, a lady of
+kingly descent (the kings, to be sure, were Irish), and of bewitching
+loveliness. When she rushed into my lonely rooms, one wild winter
+night, with a cradle in her arms and a baby in the cradle; when she
+besought me to teach that infant Hittite, Hebrew, and the Differential
+Calculus, and to bring it up in college, on commons (where the air is
+salubrious), what could I do but acquiesce? It is unusual, I know, for
+a student of my sex, however learned, to educate an infant in college
+and bring her up on commons. But for once the uncompromising nature of
+my charms strangled the breath of scandal in the bud, and little
+Leonora O'Dolite became the darling of the university. The old Keeper
+of the Bodleian was a crusty bachelor, who liked nothing young but
+calf, and preferred morocco to _that_. But even _he_ loved Leonora. One
+night the little girl was lost, and only after looking for her in the
+Hebdomadal Boardroom, in the Sheldonian, the Pusaeum, and all the
+barges, did we find that unprincipled old man amusing her by letting
+off crackers and Roman-candles among the Mexican MSS. in the Bodleian!
+
+      [6]
+      I may as well say at once that I _will not_ be responsible for
+      Polly's style. Sometimes it is flat, they tell me, and
+      sometimes it is flamboyant, whatever they may mean. It is
+      never the least like what one would expect an elderly lady don
+      (or Donna), to write.--ED.
+
+      [7]
+      See _The Mark of Cain_ [Arrowsmith], an excellent
+      shillingsworth.--ED.
+
+      Is this not 'log rolling'?--PUBLISHER.
+
+These were halcyon hours, happier as Leonora grew up and received the
+education prescribed for her by her parent. Her Hebrew was fair, and
+her Hittite up to a first class, but, to my distress, she mainly
+devoted herself to Celtic studies.
+
+I should tell you that Leonora's chief interest in life was the
+decipherment of the inscriptions on her cradle--the mummy case which
+had rocked her ancestors since Abraham's time, and which is now in your
+possession. Of itself it is a sufficient proof of the accuracy of this
+narrative. The mummy case is not the ordinary coffin of Egyptian
+commerce. The hieroglyphics have baffled Dr. Isaac Taylor, and have
+been variously construed as Chinese, Etruscan, and Basque, by the
+various professors of these learned lingoes.[8]
+
+      [8]
+      Don't you think this bit is a little dull? The public don't
+      care about dead languages.--PUBLISHER.
+
+      Story can't possibly get on without it, as you'll see. You
+      _must_ have something of this sort in a romance. Look at Poe's
+      cypher in the _Gold Beetle_, and the chart in _Treasure
+      Island_, and the Portuguee's scroll in _King Solomon's
+      Mines_.--ED.
+
+Now about this mummy case: you must know that it had been in Leonora's
+family ever since her ancestress, Theodolite, Pharaoh's daughter, left
+Egypt, not knowing when she was well off, and settled in Ireland, of
+all places, where she founded the national prosperity.[9]
+
+      [9]
+      Is not _this_ a little steep?--PUBLISHER.
+
+      No; it is in all the Irish histories. See Lady Wilde's
+      _Ancient Legends of Ireland_, if you don't believe me.--ED.
+
+The mummy case and a queer ring (see cover) inscribed with a duck, a
+duck's egg, and an umbrella, were about all that the O'Dolites kept of
+their ancient property. The older Leonora grew the more deeply she
+studied the inscriptions on the mummy case. She tried it as Zend, she
+tried it as Sanskrit, and Japanese, and the American language, and
+finally she tried it as Irish.
+
+We had a very rainy season that winter even for Oxford, and the more it
+rained the more Leonora pored over that mummy case. I kept telling her
+there was nothing in it, but she would not listen to me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+LEONORA'S DISCOVERY.
+
+
+One wild winter night, when the sleet lashed the pane, my door suddenly
+opened. I started out of a slumber, and--could I believe my eyes? can
+history repeat itself?--there stood the friend of my early youth, her
+eyes ablaze, a cradle in her arms. Was it all coming round again? A
+moment's reflection showed me that it was _not_ my early friend, but
+her daughter, Leonora.
+
+'Leonora,' I screamed, 'don't tell me that _you_----'
+
+'I have deciphered the inscription,' said the girl proudly, setting
+down the cradle. The baby had _not_ come round.
+
+'Oh, is _that_ all?' I replied. 'Let's have a squint at it' (in my case
+no mere figure of speech).
+
+'What do you call _that_?' said Leonora, handing me the accompanying
+document.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+'I call it pie,' said I, using a technical term of typography. 'I can't
+make head or tail of it,' I said peevishly.
+
+'Well, pie or no pie, I love it like pie, and I've broken the crust,'
+answered the girl, 'according to my interpretation, which I cannot
+mistrust.'
+
+'Why?' I asked.
+
+'Because,' she answered; and the response seemed sufficient when mixed
+with her bright smile.
+
+'It runs thus,' she resumed with severity, 'in the only language _you_
+can partially understand----
+
+'It runs thus,' she reiterated, and I could not help saying under such
+breath as I had left, 'Been running a long time now.'
+
+She frowned and read--
+
+    '_I, Theodolite, daughter of a race that has never been run out,
+    did to the magician Jambres, whose skill was even as the skill of
+    the gods, those things which as you have not yet heard I shall now
+    proceed to relate to you.
+
+    'Of him, I say, was I jealous, for that he loved a maiden
+    inferior--Oh how inferior!--to me in charms, wit, beauty,
+    intellect, stature, girth, and ancestry. Therefore, being well
+    assured of this, I made the man into a mummy, ere ever his living
+    spirit had left him. What arts I used to this last purpose it boots
+    not, nor do I choose to tell. When I had done this thing I put him
+    secretly away in a fitting box, even as Set concealed Osiris. Then
+    came my maidens and tidied him away, as is the wont of these
+    accursed ones. From that hour, even until now, has no man nor woman
+    known where to find him, even Jambres the magician. For though the
+    mummifying, as thou shalt not fail to discover, was in some sort
+    incomplete, yet the tidying away and the losing were so complete
+    that no putting forth of precious papyri into cupboards beneath
+    flights of stairs has ever equalled it.
+
+    'Now, therefore, shall I curse these maidens, even in Amenti, the
+    place of their tormenting.
+
+    'Forget them, may they be eternally forgotten.
+
+    'Curse them up and down through the whole solar system.'_
+
+'This is very violent language, my dear,' said I.
+
+'Our people swore terribly in Egypt,' answered Leonora, calmly.
+
+    '_But it is vain, no woman can curse worth a daric._[10]
+
+          [10] From the use of the word _daric_ I conjecture that
+          Leonora's ancestress lived under the Persian Empire. There
+          or thereabout.--M. M.
+
+    '_But for this, the losing of the one whom I mummied, must I
+    suffer countless penalties. For I, even the seeress, know not what
+    the said maidens did with the said mummy, nor do you know, nor any
+    other. And not to know, for I want my mummy to have a good cry
+    over, is great part of my punishment. But this I, the seeress, do
+    know right well, for it was revealed to me in a dream. And this I
+    do prophesy unto thee, my daughter, or daughter's daughter, ay,
+    this do I say, that a curse will rest upon me until He who was
+    mummied shall be found.
+
+    'Now this also do I, the seeress, tell thee. He who was mummified
+    shall be found in the dark country, where there is no sun, and men
+    breathe the vapour of smoke, and light lamps at noonday, and wire
+    themselves even with wires when the wind bloweth. And the place
+    where the mummy dwelleth is beneath the Three Balls of Gold. And
+    one will lead thee thither who abides hard by the great tree carven
+    like the head of an Ethiopian. And thou shalt come to the people
+    who slate strangers, and to the place of the Rolling of Logs, and
+    the music thereof.
+
+    'Thereafter shalt thou find Him, even Jambres. And when thou hast
+    healed him the Curse shall fall from me!
+
+    'Nor, indeed, shall the unmummying be accomplished, even then,
+    unless thou, O my daughter, or my daughter's daughter as before,
+    shalt go with He-who-was-mummied to the Hall of Egyptian Darkness
+    and sit in the Wizard's Chair that is thereby, even the seat which
+    was erst the Siege Perilous. These things have I said, well knowing
+    that they shall be accomplished._
+
+    '_To thee, my daughter!_
+
+    'THY GRANDMOTHER.'
+
+'There, Polly, what do you say to _that_?' said Nora.
+
+'Your grandmother!' I replied.
+
+'Polly!' said Miss Nora, looking at me with quite needlessly flashing
+eyes, 'you and I will set out on the search for this unhappy mummied
+one.'
+
+'Don't you think the critics will call the _motive_ rather thin?' I
+demurred.
+
+'Thin, to rescue my ancestress from a curse!' said Leonora.
+
+'There's just one other thing,' she mused. 'Shall we take a low comedy
+character this time, or not?'
+
+'Let's take Ustani,' I proposed, 'he can double the part with that of
+the Faithful Black! A great saving in hotel bills and railway fares.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE EQUIPMENT.
+
+
+After it had been decided that we should start in search of '_He_ who
+had been mummified alive,' the next step seemed to be to go. But
+Leonora demurred to this.
+
+'We must have our things,' she said; 'what do you think we should
+take?'
+
+'Scissors,' I replied; and I regret to say that at first she
+misinterpreted the phrase.
+
+Leonora is a powerful as well as a pretty girl, and when the bear fight
+that ensued was over my rooms were a little mixed.
+
+This suggested mixed biscuits, that invaluable refreshment of the
+traveller, and from one thing to another we soon made up a complete
+list of our needs.
+
+The scissors, and skates, and the soap we procured at the Church and
+State stores,[11] but not, of course, the revolvers. The revolvers we
+got of the genuine Government pattern, because both Leonora and I are
+dreadfully afraid of fire-arms, and we knew that _these_, anyhow, would
+not 'go off.' The jam we got, of course, at the official cartridge
+emporium, same which we did _not_ shoot the Arabs. The Gladstone bag
+and the Bryant & May's matches we procured direct from the makers,
+resisting the piteous appeals of itinerant vendors. Some life-belts we
+laid in, and, as will presently be seen, we could have made no more
+judicious purchase.
+
+      [11]
+      Won't the critics say you are advertising the stores? And the
+      tradesmen won't like it.--PUBLISHER.
+
+      Where would the _stern reality_ of the story be (see _Spectator_),
+      and the contrast with the later goings on, if you didn't give
+      names?--ED.
+
+As, from information received on a mummy case, we were travelling in
+search of a mummy, of course we laid in a case of Mumm, which was often
+a source of gaiety in our darkest hours. The wine was procured, as I
+would advise every African traveller to do, from Messrs. ----.[12]
+
+      [12]
+      Messrs. Who? Printers in a hurry.--PUBLISHER.
+
+      Suppressed the name. Messrs. ---- gave an impolite response to
+      our suggestions as to mutual arrangements.--ED.
+
+Being acquainted with the deleterious effects of a malarious tropical
+atmosphere, we secured a pair of overalls, advertised as sovran for
+'all-overishness,' the dreaded curse of an African climate. These we
+got at the celebrated emporium of Messrs. ----.[13]
+
+      [13]
+      Name suppressed. When eligible opportunity for advertisement
+      as a substitute for a cheque was hinted at, Messrs. ----
+      brusquely replied, in the low Essex _patois_, 'Wadyermean?'
+
+Our preparations being now exhaustively completed, Leonora and I
+returned to Oxford, packed our things, and consulted as to the route
+which we should adopt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+DOWN THE DARK RIVER.
+
+
+Down the Dark River, the mystic Isis, so Leonora had decided, we sped:
+Ustani plying the long pole of the dhow, or native flat-bottomed boat,
+while we took it in turns to keep him up to his work by flicking him
+with a tandem-whip.
+
+The moon went slowly down, and it occurred to Leonora to remark that we
+were 'going down' too, an unusual thing so early in term. Like some
+sweet bride into her chamber the moon departed, and the quivering
+footsteps of the Don[14] shook the planets from their places, to the
+consternation of the Savilian Professor of Astronomy, who, as in duty
+bound, was contemplating these revolutionary performances from the
+observatory in the Parks. A number of moral ideas occurred to Leonora
+and myself, but out of regard for Ustani's feelings we denied them
+expression. I began, indeed, to utter a few appropriate sentiments, but
+the poor Boshman exclaimed, 'You floggee, floggee, Missy, or preachee,
+preachee, but no _both_ floggee and preachee--' in a tone that would
+have disarmed a Bampton lecturer.
+
+      [14]
+      Do you mean the Dawn?--PUBLISHER.
+
+      Every Oxford man knows what I mean.--ED.
+
+Down we drifted, ever downwards, obedient to the inscrutable laws of
+the equilibrium of fluids. Now we swept past the White Willow, now
+through the cruel crawling waters of the Gut, now threaded the
+calamitous gorge of Iffley, and then shot the perilous cataract of
+Sandford.
+
+At this moment, just when the dhow was yet quivering with the strain, I
+noticed an expression of abject fear on the face of Ustani. His dark
+countenance was positively blanched with horror, and his teeth
+chattered.
+
+'Silence, chatterbox!' I cried, querulously perhaps, when he laid down
+his pole and seated himself in an attitude of despair.
+
+'What's the matter, old boy?' asked Leonora, and the reply came in
+faltering accents--
+
+'_The Ama Barghis!_'[15]
+
+      [15]
+      _Ama_ is the prefix of all the tribal names; Ama Zulu, Ama
+      Hagger. I connect it with the Greek preposition [Greek:
+      hama].--ED.
+
+      Don't keep hammer hammering away at Greek! This is a boy's
+      book, not a holiday task, this is!--PUBLISHER.
+
+We glanced in terror down the river's edge.
+
+There, on the path trodden by so many millions of feet that now are
+silent,[16] there were the burly forms of five or six splendid savages.
+
+      [16]
+      _Please_ don't begin moralising again. One never knows when it
+      will come upon you.--PUBLISHER.
+
+      Couldn't help just throwing it in.--ED.
+
+The character of their language--which was borne to us on the pure
+breeze of morning--their costume, their floating house, in which these
+scourges of the water highway commonly reside--everything combined to
+demonstrate that they belonged to the Barghiz, the most powerful and
+most dreaded of the native populations.
+
+'_Me umslopogey_,' whispered Ustani in his native language, meaning
+that he would retreat.
+
+'Eyes in the boat,' cried Leonora, in her clear, commanding tones;
+'paddle on all!'
+
+The Boshman, cowed by her aspect, and the mere slave of discipline (he
+had pulled in the St. Catherine's second torpid), obeyed her command,
+and presently we were abreast of the Barghiz.
+
+'Hi, Miss,' cried the Barghi chief, a man of colossal stature, 'Can't
+yer look where yer a shovin' to?'
+
+Though his words were unintelligible, his tone was insulting.
+
+Leonora rose to her feet, and to the occasion.
+
+By virtue of her rare acquaintance with savage customs, she was able to
+taunt the Barghiz with the horrors of their tribal mystery, to divulge
+which is _Death_!
+
+She openly insulted the secret orgies of the tribe.
+
+_She denounced the Dog-Feast!_
+
+'WHO ATE THE PUPPY PIE UNDER MARLOWE BRIDGE?' shrilled Leonora in
+her proud sweet young voice.
+
+In a moment a shower of stones struck the dhow, and spurred the water
+into storm. Frank Muller, the Barghi chief, distinguished himself by
+the fury of his imprecations and the accuracy of his aim. A smothered
+groan told me that Ustani had been hit in the mouth.
+
+_Whid, whad, crash_ went the stones, while Leonora plied the pole
+with desperate energy, and I erected the patent reversible umbrellas
+with which we were provided to catch any breath of favourable wind.
+
+The fierce rapidity of the stream finally carried us out of the reach
+of the infuriated Barghiz (who, moreover, were providentially slain by
+lightning--a common enough occurrence in that favoured climate, where
+nobody thinks anything of it), and we rested, weary and wounded, in a
+sheltered backwater.[17]
+
+      [17]
+      Are you not gliding insensibly into _Bess_?--PUBLISHER.
+
+      No; all right. It is a tremendous country for storms; can't
+      use them too often; adds to the sense of reality.--ED.
+
+'The dhow's looking rather dowdy,' said Leonora, glancing at the
+shattered craft.
+
+'If doughty deeds my lady please,' said I, catching her light tone,
+'why, she must take the consequences. But, Leonora,' I added,
+shuddering, 'I'm sure my feet are damp.'
+
+If there is one thing I dread it is damp feet.
+
+'No wonder,' said Leonora, calmly. 'The dhow has sprung a leek.'
+
+I searched the dhow everywhere, but could find no trace of the
+vegetable.
+
+Meanwhile the water had risen above the capstan, and Ustani, shivering
+audibly, had perched himself on the bowsprit.
+
+'Now or never,' said Leonora, 'is the moment for our life-belts.'
+
+We hurriedly put on our life-belts, regretting the absence of an
+experienced maid.
+
+'I'll be Mrs. Lecks, and you'll be Mrs. Aleshine!' laughed Leonora, as
+the dhow, shuddering in all her timbers, collapsed.
+
+'_Ego et Lecks mea!_' cried I, not to seem deficient in opportune
+gaiety of allusion, and we were in the water. We advanced briskly down
+stream, Ustani propelling himself with the pole of the dhow.
+
+Ever anxious about Ustani's University education (interrupted by this
+expedition), Leonora kept 'coaching' him in the usual way.
+
+'Bow, you're feathering under water,' she exclaimed, when the
+unfortunate Ustani disappeared in a lasher, where we, thanks to our
+life-belts, floated gaily enough.
+
+Here we paused to catch a few of the perch and gudgeons, which Leonora
+had attracted by carefully wearing white stockings.
+
+'Nothing like white stockings for perch,' she said.
+
+As there were not perch enough to go round, Ustani was told to content
+himself with the pole, a synonym, if not an equivalent.
+
+Laying our trencher-caps on the water, we used them, as of old, for
+trenchers, and made an excellent meal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE ZU.
+
+
+Our course was now through a series of cross streams, and finally we
+emerged into a long, perfectly straight, and perfectly tranquil expanse
+of water, bordered by a path which had every appearance of having been
+made by the hand of man.
+
+Night fell: a strange, murky night, smelling of lucifer matches, and
+lit on the eastern horizon by a mysterious light, flaring like a dreary
+dawn.
+
+Our passage was obstructed by a thousand obstacles, and at one point we
+plunged into the very bowels of the earth for a distance of at least a
+quarter of a mile. Next we found the canal barred by a grinning row of
+black iron teeth, under which we dived as best we might. We were now,
+Ustani whispered to us, within the strange and dreaded region known to
+the superstitious natives as _the Zu_. For the first time in our
+expedition we heard the roaring of innumerable wild beasts. The
+rattling trumpet of the elephant, the drum of the gorilla, the scream
+of the lion, the chattering of countless apes, the yells of myriads of
+cockatoos, the growls of bears, the sobs of walri,[18] the whistle of
+rhinocerotes, combined to make a strange pandemonium--strange, I call
+it, because the zoological learning I had picked up while with Nora at
+Oxford, informed me at once that the variety of roars, screams, grunts,
+skreeks, whirrings, which our footsteps seemed to awake in every kind
+of animal, bird, and insect, could be paralleled only in the pages of
+the 'Swiss Family Robinson.' Add to this, that it was _night_, yet dark
+as a day on the London flags when the fog creeps silently about your
+feet and, rising from utter blackness, grows white and whiter in its
+ascent, till it coils round your neck, a white choker!
+
+      [18]
+      Is this plural correct?--PUBLISHER.
+
+      I can't find walrus in the Latin dictionary nor anything else
+      beginning with W somehow, but it _seems_ all right.--ED.
+
+Yes, the fog was playing a dark game, but Nora could see it and go one
+lighter (there were several on the stream we had quitted). She produced
+a patent electric light.[19] Aided by this, we looked about us and saw
+the strange denizens of the Zu.
+
+      [19]
+      Patent in the first sense of the word. She has not yet
+      received offers advantageous enough to close with in the other
+      sense.
+
+It was now that the presence of mind of Leonora saved us. Foreseeing
+the probability of an encounter with wild beasts, she had filled her
+practicable pocket (she belonged to the Rational Dress Association)
+with buns and ginger-bread nuts.
+
+The elephant now walked round, the wolves also circulated, the bear
+climbed his pole, the great gorilla beat his breast and roared.
+
+Leonora was their match.
+
+For the elephant she had a rusk, a bun for the bear, and the gorilla
+was pacified by an offering of nuts from his native Brazil.
+
+                    THIS WAY TO THE CROCODILE HOUSE
+
+we now read, on an inscription in black letters, and, following the
+path indicated, we reached the dank tank where the monsters dwell. We
+had arrived at a place which I find it difficult to describe. The floor
+was smooth and hard.
+
+'What do you make of _this_?' asked Leonora, tapping her dainty foot on
+the floor.
+
+'Flags,' I replied phlagmatically, and she was silent.
+
+In the centre of the space was a dark pool, circled by crystalline
+palaces inhabited by the sacred snakes, from huge pythons to the
+terrapin proud of his tureen. Again, there was a whipsnake, and a toad,
+bloated as the aristocracy of old time, and puffed up as the plutocracy
+of to-day. For such is the lot of toads!
+
+Now a strange thing happened.
+
+'_Hark!_' said Ustani; '_hark! hark! hark!_ a den is opening!'
+
+He was right; it was the den of a catawampuss, an animal whose habits
+are so well known that I need not delay to describe them.
+
+In the centre of the dark pool in the middle of the vague space lay one
+crocodile. The rest were sleeping on the banks. The catawampuss
+secretly emerged from its den--horror, I am not ashamed to say,
+prevented me from interfering--stealthily crept across the cold floor,
+and, true to the instincts of all the feline tribe,[20] made straight
+for the water.
+
+      [20]
+      _Is_ the catawampuss one of the Felidae?--PUBLISHER.
+
+      Of course he is. Look at his name!--ED.
+
+'Ah!' cried Ustani, 'he's going for him!'
+
+The expression was ambiguous, but we understood it.
+
+The catawampuss, cunning as the dread jerboa, crept to the edge of the
+pool, took a header into it, and then, still true to the feline
+instincts, _swimming on its back_, made its way to the crocodile. In
+this manner it caught the crocodile by the tail and waked it. When the
+tail of a crocodile awakes the head awakes also. The crocodile's head,
+then, waking as the catawampuss seized its tail, caught the tail of the
+catawampuss. The interview was hurried and tumultuous.
+
+The crocodile had one of his ears chawed off (first blood for the
+catawampuss), but this was a mere temporary advantage. When next we saw
+clearly through the tempest of flying fur and scales, the head of the
+catawampuss _had entirely disappeared_, and the animal was clearly
+much distressed.
+
+Then, all of a sudden, the end came.
+
+_They had swallowed each other!_
+
+Not a vestige of either was left!
+
+This duel was a wonderful and shocking sight, and was therefore
+withdrawn, by request, as the patrons of the Gardens are directly
+interested in the morality of the establishment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+AMONG THE LO-GROLLAS.
+
+
+How to escape from our perilous position on the banks of a pestilential
+stream, haunted by catawampodes and other fell birds of prey, now
+became a subject for consideration. Our object, of course, was to reach
+the people of the Lo-grollas, through whose region, according to the
+prophecy, we must pass before finding the Magician that should guide us
+to the mummy. Our perplexity was only increased by the discovery that
+we were surrounded on every side by the walls and houses of a gigantic
+city. Stealing out by the canal as we had entered, we found to our
+comfort that this must be the very city mentioned by Theodolite. As the
+seeress had declared, a deep and noisome night always prevailed, only
+broken here and there as a wanderer scratched one of Bryant & May's
+matches and painfully endeavoured to decipher the number on the door of
+his house. The streets, moreover, were strewn and interwoven with long
+strings of iron fallen from the sky.
+
+'_The people who wire themselves with wires_,' whispered Leonora; 'what
+do you think of my interpretation _now_?'
+
+'I shall inquire,' I answered, and I _did_ inquire for the land of the
+Lo-grollas, but in vain.
+
+Happily we chanced to meet an old man, clothed in a whitish robe of
+some unknown substance, not unlike paper. This fluttering vesture was
+marked with strange characters, in black and red, which Leonora was
+able to interpret. She read them thus. They were but fragmentary.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+    +-----------------------+
+    |     SP" "AL           |
+    |                       |
+    |   VORCE  C"SE.        |
+    |                       |
+    | WAR "" "URKEY.        |
+    |                       |
+    |   P"L  ""LL  ""ZETTE. |
+    +-----------------------+
+]
+
+On the fragments the words, 'Tragedy,' 'Awful Revelations,' 'Purity,'
+and other apparently inconsistent hieroglyphics might be deciphered.
+
+He had a large and ragged staff; on his back he carried a vast Budget,
+and he was always asking everybody, 'Won't you put something in the
+Budget?'
+
+'Father,' said Leonora, in a respectful tone, 'canst thou tell us the
+way to the land of the people called Lo-grolla, and the place of the
+Rolling of Logs.'
+
+He stroked his beautiful white beard, and smiled faintly.
+
+'Indeed, child, we not only know it, but ourselves discovered it and
+wrote it up--we mean, sent our representative,' he answered.
+
+It was a peculiarity of this man that he always spoke, like royalty, in
+the first person plural.
+
+'And if a daughter may ask,' said Leonora, 'what is the name of my
+father?'
+
+Stedfastly regarding her, he answered, 'Our name is Pellmelli.'
+
+'And whither go we, my father?'
+
+'That you shall see--as soon, that is, as the fog lifts, or as our
+representative has made interest with a gas company.'
+
+With these words he furnished an unequalled supply of litter, which
+came, he said, 'from the office,' where there was plenty, and we were
+borne rapidly in a westward direction.
+
+As we journeyed, old Pellmelli gave us a good deal of information about
+the Lo-grollas, whom he did not seem to like.
+
+They were, he said, a savage and treacherous tribe, inhabiting for the
+most part the ruined abodes of some kingly race of old.
+
+The names of their chief dwellings, he told us, were still called, in
+some ancient and long-lost speech,
+
+'The Academy,' and 'The Athenaeum.'
+
+Leonora, whose knowledge of languages was extensive and peculiar, told
+Pellmelli that these names were derived from the old Greek.
+
+'Ah,' said he, 'you have clearly drunk of the wisdom of the past, and
+thy hands have held the water of the world's knowledge. Know you Latin
+also?'
+
+'Yes, O Pellmelli,' replied Leonora, and Pellmelli said he preferred
+modern tongues, though it would often be useful to him if he did in his
+dealings with the Lo-grollas.
+
+'However, if our Greek is a little to seek, our Russian is O.K.,' he
+said proudly.
+
+He was very bitter against the Lo-grollas.
+
+The Lo-grollas' favourite weapon, he told us, was the club, and he even
+proposed to show us this instrument.
+
+Our litter presently stopped outside a stately palace.
+
+The street was dark, as always in this strange city, but old Pellmelli
+paused, sniffed, and, bending his ear to the ground, listened intently.
+
+'I smell the incense,' he said, 'and hear the melodious Rolling of the
+Logs. But they shall know their master!'
+
+Thus speaking, he led us into a vast hall, where the Lo-grollas were
+sitting or standing, 'offering each other incense,' as Pellmelli
+remarked, from thin tubes of paper, which smoked at one end.
+
+'Now listen,' said Pellmelli, and he cried aloud the name of a poet
+known to the Lo-grollas.
+
+Instantly we heard, from I know not what recess, a rolling fire of
+applause and admiration, which swept past us with stately and solemn
+music, like a hymn of praise.
+
+'_There_,' said Pellmelli, 'I told you so. This is the place of the
+Rolling of Logs, and yourselves have heard it.'
+
+Leonora said she did not mind how often she heard it, as she quite
+agreed with the sentiments.
+
+'Not so!' said Pellmelli; and he cried aloud another name--the name of
+a poetaster--which was almost strange to us.
+
+Then followed through that vasty hall a sharp and rattling crash, as of
+the descent of innumerable slates.
+
+'Great heavens!' whispered Leonora, 'remember the writing; _the place
+where they slate strangers_!'
+
+As _we_ were strangers, and wholly unknown to the Lo-grollas, we
+thought they might slate _us_, and, beating a hasty retreat, soon found
+ourselves with Pellmelli in the dark outer air.
+
+'They are a desperate lot,' said he; 'they won't ever put anything in
+the Budget.'
+
+He was quivering with indignation; and Leonora, to soothe him, told him
+the story of our quest for the mummy, and asked him if he could help
+us.
+
+'We are your man,' said he. 'We propose to-morrow to send our
+representative to interview a magician who has just arrived in this
+country. He is a mysterious character; his name is Asher,[21] and it is
+said that he is the Wandering Jew, or, at all events, has lived for
+many centuries. He, if any one, can direct you in your search.'
+
+      [21]
+      Pronounced _Assha_.--ED.
+
+He then appointed a place where his representative should meet us next
+day, and we separated, Pellmelli taking his staff, and going off to
+lead an excursion against the Ama-Tory, a brutal and licentious tribe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+HE.
+
+
+Next day Leonora was suffering from a slight feverish cold, and I don't
+wonder at it considering what we suffered in the Zu. I therefore went
+alone to the rendezvous where I was to meet 'our representative.'
+
+To my surprise, nobody was there but old Pellmelli himself.
+
+'Why, you said you would send your representative!' I exclaimed.
+
+'We are our usual representative,' he answered rather sulkily. 'Come
+on, for we have to call on Messrs. Apples, the famous advertisers.'
+
+'Why?' said I.
+
+'Can you ask?' he replied. 'Can aught be more interesting than an
+advertiser?'
+
+'_I_ call it log rolling,' I answered; but he was silent.
+
+He went at a great pace, and presently, in a somewhat sordid street,
+pointed his finger silently to an object over a door.
+
+_It was the carven head of an Ethiopian!_
+
+This new confirmation of the prophecy gave me quite a turn, especially
+when I read the characters inscribed beneath--
+
+                     TRY OUR FINE NEGRO'S HEAD!
+
+'Here dwells the sorcerer, even Asher,' said Pellmelli, and began to
+crawl upstairs on his hands and knees.
+
+'Why do you do that?' I asked, determined, if I must follow Pellmelli,
+at all events not to follow his example.
+
+'It is the manner of the tribe of Interviewers, my daughter. Ours is a
+blessed task, yet must we feign humility, or the savage people kick us
+and drive us forth with our garments rent.'
+
+He now humbly tapped at a door, and a strange voice cried,
+
+'_Entrez!_'
+
+Pellmelli (whose Russian is his strong point) paused in doubt, but I
+explained that the word was French for 'come in.'
+
+He crawled in on his stomach, while I followed him erect, and we found
+ourselves before a strange kind of tent. It had four posts, and a
+broidered veil was drawn all round it.
+
+Within the veil the sorcerer was concealed, and he asked in a gruff
+tone,
+
+'Wadyerwant?'
+
+Pellmelli explained that he had come to receive a brief personal
+statement for the Budget.
+
+The Voice replied, without hesitation, 'The Centuries and the AEons
+pass, and I too make the pass. _Je saute la coupe_,' he added, in a
+foreign tongue. 'While thy race wore naught but a little blue paint, I
+dwelt among the forgotten peoples. The Red Sea knows me, and the Nile
+has turned scarlet at my words. I am Khoot Hoomi, I am also the Chela
+of the Mountain!'
+
+'Now it is my turn to ask _you_ a few easy questions.
+
+'Who sitteth on the throne of Hokey, Pokey, Winky Wum, the Monarch of
+the Anthropophagi?
+
+'Have the Jews yet come to their land, or have the owners of the land
+gone to the Jews?
+
+'Doth Darius the Mede yet rule, or hath his kingdom passed to the
+Bassarids?'
+
+As Pellmelli was utterly floored by these inquiries (which indicated
+that the sorcerer had been for a considerable time out of the range of
+the daily papers), I answered them as well as I could.
+
+When his very natural curiosity had been satisfied by a course of
+Mangnall's Questions, I ventured to broach my own business.
+
+He said he did not deal in mummies himself, though he had a stuffed
+crocodile very much at my service; but would I call to-morrow, and
+bring Leonora? He added that he had known of our coming by virtue of
+his secret art of divination. 'And thyself,' he added, 'shalt gaze
+without extra charge in the Fountain of Knowledge.'
+
+Thrusting a withered yellow hand out of the mystic tent, he pointed to
+a table where stood a small circular dish or cup of white earthenware,
+containing some brown milky liquid.
+
+'Gaze therein!' said the sorcerer.
+
+I gazed--_There was a Stranger in the tea!_
+
+Deeply impressed with the belief (laugh at it if you will) that I was
+in the presence of a being of more than mortal endowments, I was
+withdrawing, when my glance fell on his weird familiars,--two tailless
+cats. This prodigy made me shudder, and I said, in tones of the deepest
+awe and sympathy, 'Poor puss!'
+
+'Yes,' came the strange voice from within the tent, 'they are _born_
+without tails. I bred them so; it hath taken many centuries and much
+trouble, but at last I have triumphed. Once, too, I reared a breed of
+dogs with two tails, but after a while they became a proverb for pride;
+Nature loathed them, and they perished. [Greek: Chaire!] _Vale!_'[22]
+
+      [22]
+      I have consulted the authorities at the British Museum, who
+      tell me these are the Greek and the Latin words for 'Don't you
+      think you had better go? Get out!'--ED.
+
+This, though not understood, of course, by Pellmelli, was as good as an
+invitation to withdraw, so I induced the old man to come away,
+promising the magician I would return on the morrow.
+
+Who was this awful man, to whom centuries were as moments, whose very
+correspondence, as I had noticed, came through the Dead Letter Office,
+and who spoke in the tongues of the dead past?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE POWER OF HE.
+
+
+Next day Leonora, the Boshman, and I returned to the home of the mage.
+He stood before us, a tall thin figure enwrapped in yellowish, strange
+garments, of a singular and perfumed character--spicy in fact--which
+produced upon me a feeling which I cannot attempt to describe, and
+which I can only vaguely hint at by saying that the whole form conveyed
+to me the notion of _something wrapped up_.[23]
+
+      [23]
+      The public will say, so is your meaning.--PUBLISHER.
+
+      Don't give it away, but that's what I mean.--ED.
+
+With a curious swaying motion which I have never seen anything
+like--for he seemed less to be walking than to be impelled from behind
+like a perambulator, or dragged from in front like a canal-boat--he
+advanced to the table, where lay some pieces of a white substance like
+papyrus, all of the same size and oblong shape, which showed on their
+surfaces, some of them antique-looking figures and faces curiously
+stained, and others red and black dots, arranged, as it seemed to me,
+in some sort of design, although at first sight they looked jumbled
+enough. Near to these lay a book bound in brown, but with heavy black
+and gold lettering, amid which I thought I could make out the words
+_Modern Magic_, and the name _Hoffmann_. The swathed figure poised
+itself a moment, resting one thin hand on the table, and then spoke.
+
+'There is naught that is wonderful about this matter,' it said, 'could
+you but understand it. Prestigiation itself is wonderful, but that its
+phases and phrases should be changed is not wonderful. Not now, I ween,
+is the _gibeciere_ of the Ancient Wizard seen; not now the "Presto,
+pass!" of the less ancient conjurer heard. Nay, all things change, yet
+I change not; that which is not yet cannot yet have taken place--at
+least not its proper place; that which shall not be may yet come to a
+bad pass, and the blind race of man watches helpless the trammels it
+could shake off did it but greatly dare. My business, ladies and
+gentlemen, now is, as I have just explained to you, to attempt to
+puzzle your eyes by the quickness of my fingers. Yours, on the other
+hand, will be to detect the way--or _modus operandi_, as old Simon
+Magus used to say--in which I perform my little wonders--if you can.
+Will any gentleman lend me a helmet--I mean a hat?'
+
+As the only male person present was the Boshman, this appeared to me a
+futile question, and even the stately Magician seemed to be struck by
+some dim idea of the kind, for I could discern a pair of mysterious
+eyes peering anxiously through his swathings, and I heard him mutter to
+himself in several languages, 'Ought to have thought of that. No hat
+present. Don't know any trick to produce one. Nothing about it in the
+book.'
+
+But he recovered himself quickly, and went on in clear cheerful tones,
+'Ladies and gentlemen, as no person present has a hat, I will proceed
+to another of the tricks on my little programme. Will any lady oblige
+me by drawing a card? Will you, madam?' he said, bowing with infinite
+grace to Leonora.
+
+Her hand touched Asher's as she drew a card, and I saw a shiver pass
+over the veiled figure.
+
+'Will the lady on your left now oblige me?' he continued, turning to
+me, who was indeed standing on Leonora's left hand, though how he knew
+it is a thing I have never been able fully to understand.
+
+'Now, please,' he continued, 'look well at your cards, but do not show
+them to me or to each other. _Basta. Assez._ [Greek: Konx Ompax]. Now,
+please, still hiding the cards from me and from each other, exchange
+them. Now,' he continued, his form dilating with conscious power, 'see
+how true is it that change is perennial, even so far as magic and
+Nature herself can be perennial. For she who held the King of Hearts
+now holds the Queen of Spades, and she who held the Queen of Spades now
+holds the King of Hearts. Thus much among the shifting shadows of life
+can I, the wizard, see as a sure and accomplished fact. Is it not so,
+my children?'
+
+We bowed in silence, overawed by the wonder of his presence, although
+Leonora whispered to me, 'He has got the cards wrong, but we had better
+say nothing about it.'
+
+'And now,' he continued, 'look upon this glass (it was an ordinary
+wineglass) and on this silver coin,' producing a _stater_ of the
+Eretrian Republic. 'See! I place the coin in the glass, and now can I
+tell you by its means what you will of the future. There is no magic in
+it, only a little knowledge of the secrets, mutable yet immutable, of
+Nature. And this is an old secret. I did not find it. It was known of
+yore in Atlantis and in Chichimec, in Ur and in Lycosura. Even now the
+rude Boshmen keep up the tradition among their medicine-men. Vill any
+lady ask the coin a qvestion?' he continued, in a hoarse Semitic
+whisper, for all currencies and all languages were alike to him. 'Sure
+it's the coin 'll be afther tellun' ye what ye like. Voulez-vous
+demander, Mademoiselle? Wollen Sie, gnaedige Signora?'
+
+'Then,' said Leonora, in trembling accents, 'I demand to know if I
+shall find that which I seek.'
+
+The figure, drawing itself up to its full height, passed its hand with
+a proud, impatient, and mystic gesture across the glass, and then stood
+in the attitude of one who awaited a response. 'Should the coin, my
+daughter, jump three times,' he said, 'the answer is yea. Should it
+jump but once, nay.'
+
+We waited anxiously. The coin did not jump at all! The wizard took up
+the glass, shook it impatiently, and put it down again. Still the coin
+showed no sign of animation. Then the wizard uttered some private
+ejaculations in Hittite, but still the coin did not move. Then he
+affected an air of jauntiness, and said, 'I remember a circumstance of
+a similar kind when I was playing odd man out ([Greek: tritos
+anthropos] dear old Sokrates used to call it) with Darius the night
+before Marathon. Darius was the Mede. _I_ was the Medium.' Then he
+seemed about to work another wonder, when he was interrupted by the
+harsh cackling laughter of the Boshman, who advanced with careless
+defiance and observed in his own tongue, which we all knew perfectly,
+that he 'could see all the tricks the wizard could do and go several
+better.' I waited, horror-struck, to see what would follow this
+insolence.
+
+Asher made a movement so swift that I could scarcely follow it; but it
+seemed to me that he lightly laid his hand upon the poor Boshman's
+head. I looked at Ustani, and then staggered back in wonder, for there
+upon his snowy hair, right across the wool-white tresses, were five
+finger-marks _black as coal_.
+
+'Now go and stand in the corner,' said the magician, in a cold inhuman
+voice. The unhappy Boshman tremblingly did his bidding, putting his
+hands to his head in a dazed way as he went, and, incredible as it may
+seem, thus transferring--as if the curse carried double force--some of
+the black mark to his own fingers.
+
+'I will now,' continued the wizard, who had regained his ordinary
+polished, if somewhat swaying and overbalanced, manner--'I will now,
+with your kind permission, show you a little trick which was a great
+favourite with the late Tubal Cain when we were boys together. Observe,
+I take this paper-knife--it is an ordinary paper-knife--look at it for
+yourselves. I will place it on my down-turned hand. It is an ordinary
+hand--look at it for yourselves, but don't touch it; the consequences
+might be disastrous.'
+
+I, for my part, having seen the consequences in the case of Ustani's
+hair, had no desire to do so.
+
+'You see,' continued the sorcerer, 'I place the paper-knife _there_! It
+falls. Why? Because of gravity. What is gravity? Newton, as you know
+well, invented the art; but what of that? Did he find that which did
+not exist? No, for the non-existent is as though it had never been. But
+now, availing myself of the resources of science, which is ever old and
+ever young, I clasp my wrist--the wrist of the hand on which the
+paper-knife rests--with the other hand, and--you see.'
+
+As the sorcerer spoke, he deftly turned his hand palm downwards, and
+the paper-knife fell with a crash and a clatter on the floor. It was
+terrible to see the dumb wrath of the swathed figure at this new
+defeat.
+
+Even in this moment the Boshman glided like a serpent among us, picked
+up the paper-knife, and triumphantly performed the very miracle in
+which the wizard had failed. A harsh cackle of laughter announced his
+success. But the mage was even with him, or rather he was 'odds and
+evens.' Rapidly he drew his forefinger across the Boshman's face,
+perpendicularly and horizontally--
+
+[Illustration:
+
+      |  |
+    --+--+--
+      |  |
+    --+--+--
+      |  |
+]
+
+On the skin of Ustani, azure with terror, appeared the above diagram in
+lines of white! The mage then made the sign of a +, thus--
+
+[Illustration:
+
+      |  |+
+    --+--+--
+      |  |
+    --+--+--
+      |  |
+]
+
+and challenged Leonora to a contest of skill in 'oughts and crosses.'
+But the Boshman, catching a view of his own altered aspect in a mirror,
+exclaimed, 'You 'standy Ustani? Him no standy He! Him show hisself for
+tin! Adults one shilling, kids tizzy. _Me Umslopoguey!_' And he sloped;
+nor did we ever again see this victim of an overwhelming Power
+(limited).
+
+We presently took our leave of the mage, promising to call next day,
+and bring a policeman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A BODY IN PAWN.
+
+    'Gin a body meet a body!'--BURNS.
+
+
+Though Leonora's faith in the magician had been a good deal shaken by
+his failures in his black art, she admitted that, as a clairvoyant, he
+might be more inspired. We therefore went, as he had directed us, to
+the neighbourhood of Clare Market, where he had prophesied that we
+should find a Temple adorned with the Three Balls of Gold, which the
+Lombards bore with them from their far Aryan home in Frangipani. Nor
+did this part of the prophecy fail to coincide with the document on the
+mummy case. Through the thick and choking darkness which has made 'The
+Lights of London' a proverb, we beheld the glittering of three aureate
+orbs. And now, how to win our way, without pass-word or, indeed,
+pass-book, into this home of mystery?
+
+Here, in these immemorial recesses, the natives had long been wont to
+bury, as we learned, their oldest objects of interest and value. There,
+when we pushed our way within the swinging portal, lay around us, in
+vast and solemn pyramids of portable property, the silent and touching
+monuments of human existence. The busy life of a nation lay sleeping
+here! Here, for example, stood that ancestral instrument for the
+reckoning of winged Time, which in the native language is styled a
+'Grandfather's Clock.' Hard by lay the pipe, fashioned of the 'foam of
+perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn,' the pipe on which, perchance,
+some swain had discoursed sweet music near the shady heights of High
+Holborn. The cradle of infancy, the gamp of decrepitude, the tricycle
+of fleeting youth, the paraffin lamp which had lighted bridal gaiety,
+the flask which had held the foaming malt,--all were gathered here, and
+the dust lay deep on all of them!
+
+I was about to make some appropriate moral remarks, when I heard
+Leonora (whose command of tongues is simply _marvellous_) address an
+attendant priestess in the local dialect.
+
+'Here, miss,' said she, ''ow much can yer let us 'ave on this 'ere
+ticker?' (producing her watch).
+
+The priestess, whose clear-cut features and two lovely black eyes
+betrayed a mixture of Semitic blood, was examining the 'turnip'--as she
+called the watch--when Leonora, saying 'Mum's the word,' rather
+violently called my attention (with her elbow) to a strange parcel
+lying apart from the rest.
+
+It was a long bundle, as long as a man, and was swathed in cerements of
+white Egyptian tissue.
+
+''Tis you! 'tis you!' I sneezed rapturously, recognising the object of
+our search, the very mummy which, two thousand years ago, Theodolite
+had prepared with her own fair but cruel hands.
+
+There, beyond the shadow of doubt, lay all that was mortal of the
+unlucky Jambres! On the tissue which wrapped the bundle I distinctly
+recognised _the stencilled mark corresponding to Leonora's scarab_, a
+duck, the egg of a duck, and an umbrella.[24]
+
+      [24]
+      See cover. Most important to have this cover bound in _sur
+      brochure_.--PUBLISHER.
+
+'How much,' said I to the priestess of the temple, 'could you afford to
+let me have that old bundle of rags for?'
+
+'That old bundle of rags?' said the woman, 'Take it, dear lady, take it
+and keep it (if you can), and the blessing of Abraham be on your head!'
+
+So anxious was she to part with the mummy that we could hardly get her
+to accept a merely nominal price. To give plausibility to the purchase,
+we said we wanted the rags for a paper-mill. Joyously did Leonora and I
+call a passing chariot, and, with the mummy between us, we drove to our
+abode. I was surprised on the way by receiving a pettish push from
+Leonora's foot.
+
+'Don't tread on my toes,' she said, though I had not even stirred. I
+told her as much, and we were getting a little animated when my bonnet
+was twitched off and thrown out into the darkness.
+
+'Leonora,' I said severely, 'these manners are unworthy of a lady!'
+
+'I declare, my dear Polly,' she replied, 'that I never even moved!' and
+as she was obviously in earnest I had to accept her word.
+
+When we reached home, after a series of petty but provoking
+accidents,[25] we first locked up the mummy very carefully in the spare
+bedroom. To-morrow would be time enough, we said, to consult the wizard
+as to our next movement. We ordered a repast of the native viands
+(which included, I remember, a small but savoury fish, the Blo-ta), and
+sought our couches, in better spirits than usual.
+
+      [25]
+      I say, are you not gliding insensibly into _The Fallen
+      Idol_?--PUBLISHER.
+
+      Not a bit, you wait and you'll see.--ED.
+
+Next morning, long before Leonora was awake, the young but intelligent
+Slavi (so the common people call housemaids) crept into my chamber with
+a death-white face.
+
+'Omum,' she said (it is a term of courtesy), 'wot a night we've been
+having?'
+
+'Why, what is the matter, Jemimaran?' I asked, for that was her
+melodious native name.
+
+'There's _something_ in the spare room, mum, a-carrying on horful. The
+bell ringing all night, and the Thing screaming and walking up and down
+as restless! I'm a-going to give warning, mum,' she added
+confidentially.
+
+'Why, you've _given_ it,' I said, to reassure her. 'Forewarned is
+forearmed.'
+
+'Four-legged It do run sometimes, like a beast, mum, wailing terrible.
+Up and down, up and down It goes, and always ringing the bell, and
+crying high for a brandy-and-soda, mum, like a creature tormented.'[26]
+
+      [26]
+      Do take care. This is copyright! Don't you remember Mr.
+      Hyde?--PUBLISHER.
+
+      Neither Hyde nor Hidol, you're so nervous. Do wait till the
+      end.--ED.
+
+      Wish it was come!--PUBLISHER.
+
+'Well,' I asked, though every hair upon my head stood erect with horror
+(adding greatly to the peculiarity of my appearance), 'well, did you
+take It what It asked for?'
+
+'Yes, mum; for very fear I dared not refuse. And when I had handed it
+in by a chink in the open door, first there was a sound like drinking,
+then an awful cry, "Potash again!" and then a heavy soft thud, as if
+you had knocked over a bolster stuffed with lead, mum.'
+
+Through the brown glimmer of dawn (it was about ten A.M.) I hurried
+to Leonora's chamber. She was dressed, and came out. 'What do you
+advise?' I asked.
+
+'Send for Mr. Urmson, the eminent lawyer, at once,' said she, 'he is
+used to this kind of thing. Nothing like taking Counsel's opinion. But
+first let me knock the door open!' She applied her magnificent white
+shoulder to the door, which flew into splinters.
+
+There was not a trace of the mummy, but there, in a deprecatory
+attitude, stood the philosopher Asher![27]
+
+      [27]
+      Please pronounce _Assha_.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE WIZARD UNBOSOMS.
+
+
+'Sir,' said Leonora, 'may I request you to inform me why we find you,
+rampaging an unbidden guest, in the chamber which is sacred to
+hospitality?'
+
+'[Greek: Ten d' apameibomenos prosephe koruthaiolos] Asher,' answered
+the magician, dreamily. 'Do my senses deceive me, or--that voice, that
+winsome bearing--am I once more with Helen on the walls of Ilion?'
+
+'No, sir, you are in 30 Acacia Gardens,' replied Leonora, severely.
+'_Why_, permit me to repeat myself, do I find you here, an unbidden
+guest?'
+
+'To say that I never guessed you'd find me here,' answered the
+magician, 'might seem a mere trifling with language and with your
+feelings.'
+
+'My feelings!' exclaimed the proud girl, indignantly, 'just as if----
+But answer me!'
+
+'When a man has seen as much of life as I have,' answered the magician,
+'when the AEons are to him merely as drops in a bucket which he will
+never kick--and when he suffers,' he added mournfully, 'from attacks of
+multiplex personality, he recognises the futility of personal
+explanations.'
+
+'At least I can compel you to tell us _Where is the mummy?_' said
+Leonora.
+
+'I am, or lately was, that mummy,' said the wizard, haughtily; then,
+drawing himself up to his full height, he added, 'I am the REAL
+JAMBRES! Old Gooseberry Jamberries,' he added solemnly. 'No other is
+genuine!'
+
+'You are playing, sir, on our credulity,' replied the girl; 'no living
+man can be a mummy,--outside of the House of Lords or the Royal
+Academy.'
+
+'You speak,' he said tenderly, 'with the haste of youth and
+inexperience. When you have lived as long as I have, you will know
+better. Hearken to my story.
+
+'Three or four thousand years ago--for what is time?--I was the
+authorised magician at the Court of Ptolemy Patriarchus. I had a
+rival--the noted witch Theodolite. In an evil hour she won me by a show
+of false affection, and, taking advantage of my passion, mummified me
+alive. To this I owe my remarkable state of preservation at an advanced
+age. _Tres bien conserve_,' he added fatuously.
+
+'But she only half accomplished her purpose. By some accident, which
+has never been explained, and in spite of the stress of competition,
+she had purchased _pure_ salts of potash for the execution of her fell
+purpose in place of _adulterated_ salts of soda.
+
+'To this I owe it that I am now a living man; and in a moment----'
+
+A certain stiffness of demeanour, which we had noticed, but ascribed to
+pride, worked an unspeakable change in the mage. As we looked at him
+_he hardened into our cheap mummy_.
+
+'Here's a jolly go!' said Leonora, her mind submerged in terror.
+
+I sprang to the bell, '_Soda water at once!_' I cried, and the _slavi_
+appeared with the fluid. We applied it to the parched lips of the
+mummy, and Jambres was himself again.
+
+'Now will you tell me?' I asked, when he had been given a cigarette and
+made comfortable, 'why we found you--I mean the mummy--under the Three
+Balls?'
+
+''Twas a pledge,' he replied. 'When my resources ran low, and my rent
+was unpaid, the landlady used to take advantage of my condition and
+raise a small sum on me.'
+
+All seemed now explained; but Leonora was not yet satisfied.
+
+'You have----' she began.
+
+'Yes, a strawberry mark,' he replied wearily, 'on the usual place!'
+
+'The quest is accomplished,' I said.
+
+'Nay,' replied Jambres, to give him his real name. 'There is still the
+adventure of the Siege Perilous.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE WIZARD'S SCHEME.
+
+
+'We must, as you are aware, visit the Siege Perilous in the Hall of
+Egypt, and risk ourselves in the chair of the Viewless Maiden, of Her
+that is not to be seen of Man.'
+
+'We know it,' said Leonora.
+
+'It is,' continued the mage, 'your wish to accomplish the end for which
+you set forth. This seems to you an easy matter enough; young hearts
+are full of such illusions, and, believe me, I would willingly change
+my years, which are lost in geological time, for one hand's breadth of
+your daring. Know, then,' continued this strange creature, 'that the
+time has now come when matters must be brought to an end between us. It
+will be my business, and, I will add, my pleasure,' he continued with a
+lofty air which sat drolly enough upon him in his yellow duds, 'to
+conduct you to the Siege Perilous. From you, in return, I must exact an
+unquestioning obedience; and I will add a measureless _confidence_. I
+beg you to bear in mind that the slightest resistance to my will must
+be followed by consequences of which you cannot estimate either the
+reach or the extension.'
+
+There was such a parrot-like pomp about the creature's tautology, and
+such an old-world affectation of fine manners \in his constant
+obeisances, that I could hold it no longer, but fairly laughed out in
+his face.
+
+I dreaded, it is true, lest some such fate as Ustani's might punish me
+for my temerity, but for reasons which doubtless seemed sufficient to
+himself the wizard merely looked at me through his veil, shook himself
+a little in his swathings, and said in a matter-of-fact voice, 'Well,
+well, perhaps we have had enough of such talk as this. Let's get ahead
+with the business before us. That business is to reach the Siege
+Perilous, or Magic Chair. Thither will I guide ye, and there ye shall
+see what ye shall see. But first it is needful, as all sages have
+declared, that ye shall show your confidence in me! I value not wealth.
+Gold is mere dross--nay, I have the mines of King Solomon at my
+disposal. But when the weary King Ecclesiast confided to me, in his
+palace of ivory and cedar in Jerusalem, long ago, the secret of these
+diamond treasures, he bade me reveal it to none who did not show their
+confidence in me.
+
+'Let _them_ entrust _you_,' said Solomon, 'with their paltry wealth,
+ere _you_ place in _their_ hands opulence beyond the dreams of
+avarice. Give me, then, merely as a sign of confidence, gold, much
+gold, or,' he continued in a confidential and Semitic tone, 'its
+equivalent in any safe securities, American railways preferred. Don't
+bring bank-notes, my dear--risky things, risky things! Why, when I was
+pals with Claude Duval--but 'tis gone, 'tis gone! Now, my dears, what
+have you got? what have you got?'
+
+'I have,' answered Leonora, in her clear sweet voice and girlish
+trustfulness, 'as is my invariable custom, my _dot_, namely,
+300,000_l._ worth of American railway shares, chiefly Chicago N.W. and
+L. & N., in my pocket.'
+
+'That's right, my dear, that's right,' said the Erie wizard; 'just hand
+those to me, and then we can start at once.
+
+                '_And when_ (he went on in italics)
+                            _o my Leonora
+                when that mystic change has been worked
+                      which has been predestined
+              for countless ages and which shall come as
+                            sure as fate,
+                      then on another continent
+             kindred to thine yet strange, even in the land
+                of the railways that thy shares are in,
+                             Thou and I,
+                     the Magician and the Novice,
+                  the Celebrated Wizard of the West
+                      and his Accomplished Pupil
+                         Mademoiselle Leonore
+                will make a tour that shall drag in the
+                               dollars
+                      by the hatful. NOW COME!'_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE PERILOUS PATH.
+
+
+Forth we rushed into the darkness, through the streaming deluge of that
+tropic clime. For the seraphic frenzy had now come upon the mage in
+good earnest, and all the Thought-reader burned in his dusky eyes.
+
+We presented, indeed, a strange spectacle, for the mage, in his silvery
+swathings, held Leonora by the hands, and Leonora held me, as we raced
+through the gloom.
+
+In any other city our aspect and demeanour had excited attention and
+claimed the interference of the authorities.
+
+In Berlin Uhlans would have charged us, in Paris grape-shot would have
+ploughed through our ranks. _Here_ they deemed we were but of the
+sacred race of Thought-readers, who, by a custom of the strange people,
+are permitted to run at random through the streets and even to enter
+private houses.
+
+We were not even followed, in our headlong career, by a crowd, for the
+public had ceased to interest itself in frenzied research for hidden
+pins or concealed cigarettes.
+
+After a frantic chase Jambres (late 'the Mage') paused, breathless, in
+front of a building of portentous proportions.
+
+How it chanced I have never been able to understand, but, as I am a
+living and honourable woman, this hall had the characteristics of
+ancient Egyptian architecture, and that (miraculous as it may appear)
+in perfect preservation.
+
+There are the hypostyle halls, the two Osirid pillars--colossal figures
+of strange gods, in coloured relief--there is the great blue scarab,
+the cartouche, the _pschent_, the _pschutt_, and all that we admire in
+the Rameseum of the Ancient Empire.
+
+But all was silent, all was deserted; the vast adamantine portals were
+closed.
+
+Jambres paused in dismay.
+
+'Since I last gave an exhibition of mine art in those halls,' said
+he, '('twas in old forgotten days, in Bosco's palmy time), much is
+altered. OPEN SESAME!' he cried; but, curious to say, _nothing
+opened_!
+
+At that moment a dark figure crawled submissively to our feet. It was
+old Pellmelli.
+
+His instinct for 'copy' had brought him on our track, and he began--
+
+'As our representative, I am commissioned----'
+
+Jambres (late 'Asher') turned from him, and he fell (still making
+notes) prone on his face, where we left him, as the pace was too good
+to inquire.
+
+The mage now reconnoitred carefully the vast facade of the Hall of
+Egypt, and finally fixed his gaze on a perpendicular leaden column,
+adorned with strange symbols, through which (for it was a rainy night)
+raging torrents of water were distinctly heard flowing downwards to who
+knows what abysmal and unfathomable depths?
+
+In this weird climate it was the familiar yet dreaded _waterspout_!
+
+Jambres, with the feline agility of a catapult of the mountain, began
+to climb the perpendicular leaden channel to which he had called our
+attention, and of course we had to follow him. It was perfectly
+marvellous to see the ease and grace with which he skipped and hopped
+up the seemingly naked face of the wall. There were places indeed where
+our position was perilous enough, and it did not add to our
+cheerfulness to hear the horrid roaring and gurgling of the unseen and
+imprisoned waters that poured down the channel with a violence which
+seemed as if they might at any moment burst their bonds. Helped,
+however, by certain ledges which projected from the wall beneath square
+openings filled with some transparent substance, on which ledges from
+time to time we rested, we arrived at the steep crest, and paused for
+repose beneath the leafy shade of the roof-tree, Jambres lightly
+leading the way.
+
+'Now,' said Jambres, 'comes the most delicate part of our journey.'
+
+So indeed it proved, for the mage began rapidly to divest himself of
+his mysterious swathings. Wrapper by wrapper he undid, cerement on
+cerement, till both Leonora and I wondered when he would stop.
+
+Stop he did, however, and, with a practised hand, shot his linen into
+one long rope, which he carefully attached to an erect and smoking
+pillar, perhaps of basaltic formation, perhaps an ancient altar of St.
+Simeon Skylites. When all was taut, Jambres approached a slanting
+slope, smooth and transparent, perhaps of glacial origin. On this he
+stamped, and the fragments tinkled as they fell into unknown deeps.
+Then he seized the rope, let himself down, and from far below we heard
+his voice calling to us to follow him.
+
+Leonora and I descended with agility to some monstrous basin in the
+abyss--the Pit, Jambres called it. Here Jambres met us, and bade us
+light the railway reading-lamps which, as I forgot to mention, we had
+brought with us. Then, jumping off with the lead, he advanced along the
+floor, picking his way with great care, as indeed it was most necessary
+to do, for the floor was strewn with strange forms, stumbling over the
+legs and backs of which it would have been easy to break one's own.
+When we halted, brought up by a barrier, of which I did not at first
+discern the nature, our lamps (as is sometimes the way of some such
+patent lamps[28]) suddenly went out. Jambres whispered hoarsely, 'Wot
+are yer waitin' for? Come on; [Greek: all' age]. _Nunc est scandendum._'
+We saw before us a vast expanse, of which it was impossible to gauge
+the extent, so impenetrable, so overpowering was the gloom of its
+blackness. 'It is the abode,' said Jambres, mysteriously, 'of my rival
+De Kolta!' He himself, owing to his use of his swathings, was
+sufficiently _decollete_
+
+      [28]
+      I think I've managed not to be libellous.--ED.
+
+      We shall see.--PUBLISHER.
+
+On the hither side was a row of _lumieres a pied_ which seemed _afloat_
+on the darkness, and in their centre a sudden chasm which looked as if
+it had been made by human agency. The fitful moonbeams[29] showed us a
+most curious and accurately shaped spur, or _run-down_ as it is called
+in the native dialect, which connected the floor on which we stood with
+the darkness beyond.
+
+      [29]
+      You've not mentioned them before.--PUBLISHER.
+
+      That's why I do now.--ED.
+
+What mortal, however hardy, dared cross this quivering wavering bridge
+in the total darkness? Beneath our feet it swayed and leaped like
+rotten ice on the magic Serpentine.
+
+'Hush,' cried Jambres, 'it comes, it comes! Be still!'
+
+Even as he spoke, we saw a _long shaft of yellow light_ streaming
+from an unknown centre, and searching out the recesses of the cavern.
+
+'Be still, as you value your liberty,' whispered Jambres. 'The Bobi is
+on his beat.'
+
+Then, as the long shaft smote the swaying bridge, he lightly crossed
+it, and beckoned us to follow. We obeyed, and in another instant all
+was again darkness.
+
+'He has gone his round,' said Jambres. 'Won't be back for hours!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE MAGIC CHAIR.
+
+
+There, on the plateau, or platform, we had seen, stood, in naked
+mystery, the Enchanted Chair.
+
+''Tis the weird chair of the Viewless Maiden, the place of Her who is
+no more seen,' said Jambres. 'Who shall sit therein?'
+
+'The writing said,' remarked the dauntless Leonora, 'that a descendant
+of Theodolite must achieve this adventure. I am ready.'
+
+'Nay, not so, maiden,' murmured Jambres, 'try it not till I have made
+experience thereof. Me it cannot harm; in me you see the original
+inventor; beware of spurious imitations. But it is a dread experience;
+let me work it first!'
+
+Leonora could not resist his winning manner and concern for her safety.
+
+'I move,' she said, 'that Mr. Jambres do take the chair at this
+meeting.'
+
+'I second that proposal,' said I, and there was not a dissentient
+voice.
+
+'Mr. Jambres will now take the chair,' said Leonora, and the wizard,
+his swathing robes bulging with Leonora's securities, glided forward.
+
+Then an awful thing occurred. No sooner had Jambres sat down than
+Leonora and I found ourselves--how can we expect it to be
+believed?--gazing on a blank, bare space!
+
+The chair was still there, but the wizard was gone. Leonora turned to
+me, horror in her eyes, her golden curls changed to a pale German
+silver.
+
+'It is the chair of the Vanishing Lady,' she said.
+
+'It is the Confidence Trick,' I cried; and we both lost consciousness
+as the true state of the case flashed on our minds. The wizard was off
+with 300,000_l._ in high-class American securities.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+What remains to be told is of little public interest. When we came to
+ourselves, all was darkness. Escape seemed impossible.
+
+We could not swarm up the rope, by the way we had come.
+
+We knew not when the shaft of yellow light might return on its beat.
+
+We lit a Bryant & May's match, and thereby groped our way downwards,
+ever downwards.
+
+Finally, as we had given up all for lost, Leonora said, 'Don't you
+think the air is a little stuffy?'
+
+We sniffed about the rocky floor, and found an iron grating.
+
+It yielded to a strong tug, and we descended into subterranean
+passages, framed by the art of men, through which rolled and surged
+torrents of turbid water.
+
+Through these we waded, attacked by armies of rats, till, thank
+goodness! we saw a moving light, flashing hither and thither on the
+torrent.
+
+Half swimming, half wading, we reached the bearer of the light.
+
+It was old Pellmelli, 'doing a Sanitary special,' as he told us.
+
+We, somewhat deceitfully, led him to believe that we had lost ourselves
+on a similar errand, for a rival Budget, with which he was concerned in
+a Paper Mill.[30]
+
+      [30]
+      What do you mean by a Paper Mill?--PUBLISHER.
+
+      A Journalistic War, then.--ED.
+
+On our faithfully promising to give him exclusive information about our
+adventures, 'for an Extra,' as he said, old Pellmelli conducted us to
+an orifice in the rock, whence we escaped, at last, into the light of
+such day as dwells in the Dark City.
+
+Our hopes now entirely rest on finding Jambres again, but it may be, of
+course, a good three or four thousand years before that.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+Here this strange narrative closes; and as I end my editorial task, I
+have only one question to ask myself--Will this thing go on? will
+Jambres and Leonora meet? will the Americans give up Jambres under the
+Extradition Act? or----
+
+Is the great drama Played Out?--ED.
+
+
+PRINTED BY
+SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+LONDON
+
+
+
+
+A SEQUEL TO 'KING SOLOMON'S MINES.'
+
+                            *      *      *
+
+ALLAN QUATERMAIN:
+
+BEING AN ACCOUNT OF HIS FURTHER ADVENTURES AND DISCOVERIES
+
+IN COMPANY WITH SIR HENRY CURTIS, BART. CAPTAIN JOHN GOOD, R.N. AND
+ONE UMSLOPOGAAS,
+
+_Being a Sequel to 'KING SOLOMON'S MINES,'_
+
+By H. RIDER HAGGARD,
+
+Was commenced in the January Number of
+
+LONGMAN'S MAGAZINE.
+
+_PRICE SIXPENCE, MONTHLY._
+
+
+_ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS._
+
+'Mr. HAGGARD certainly provides the readers of _Longman's Magazine_
+with a rich supply of excitement.'
+
+
+_COUNTY GENTLEMAN._
+
+'The Author has so far dispensed with the element of the supernaturally
+strange which provided much of the weird attractiveness of "King
+Solomon's Mines," and in an even greater measure of "She," but the
+inherent probability of the present narrative rather enhances than
+detracts from its interest in the mind of the reflective reader.'
+
+
+London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.
+
+
+
+
+POPULAR NOVELS
+
+                            *      *      *
+
+By ELIZABETH M. SEWELL.
+
+Price 1_s._ each, boards; 1_s._ 6_d._ each, cloth plain; 2_s._ 6_d._
+each, cloth extra, gilt edges
+
+MY HERBERT.                     KATHARINE ASHTON.
+GERTRUDE.                       CLEVE HALL.
+LANETON PARSONAGE.              IVORS.
+MARGARET PERCIVAL.              URSULA.
+EARL'S DAUGHTER.                A GLIMPSE of the WORLD.
+THE EXPERIENCE OF LIFE.
+
+                            *      *      *
+
+By BRET HARTE.
+
+IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS. 2_s._ boards; 2_s._ 6_d._ cloth.
+
+ON THE FRONTIER (Three Stories). 1_s._ sewed.
+
+BY SHORE AND SEDGE (Three Stories). 1_s._ sewed.
+
+                            *      *      *
+
+By MRS. OLIPHANT.
+
+IN TRUST. 2_s._ boards; 2_s._ 6_d._ cloth.
+
+MADAM. 3_s._ 6_d._ cloth.
+
+                            *      *      *
+
+By JAMES PAYN.
+
+THICKER THAN WATER. 2_s._ boards; 2_s._ 6_d._ cloth.
+
+THE LUCK OF THE DARRELLS. 3_s._ 6_d._ cloth.
+
+                            *      *      *
+
+By the Author of the 'ATELIER DU LYS.'
+
+THE ATELIER DU LYS; or, An Art Student in the Reign of Terror. 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+MADEMOISELLE MORI: a Tale of Modern Rome. 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+IN THE OLDEN TIME: a Tale of the Peasant War in Germany. 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+HESTER'S VENTURE. 6_s._
+
+                            *      *      *
+
+London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.
+
+
+
+
+NEW STORY BY H. RIDER HAGGARD.
+
+                            *      *      *
+
+SHE:
+
+_A HISTORY OF ADVENTURE._
+
+By H. RIDER HAGGARD,
+
+AUTHOR OF 'KING SOLOMON'S MINES' &c.
+
+With Facsimiles of either face of the Sherd of Amenartas and of the
+various uncial Greek, Roman, Black-letter, and Early English
+Inscriptions thereon inscribed.
+
+_Crown_ 8_vo. price_ 6_s._
+
+                            *      *      *
+
+_SCOTSMAN._--'One of the most extraordinary stories that has ever made
+its appearance in the English tongue.'
+
+_NONCONFORMIST._--'One of the most fascinating and remarkable works of
+imagination that has appeared for a considerable time.'
+
+_STANDARD._--'A story told with much imagination and a vividness of
+detail which carries the reader along with it, and almost forces him to
+believe in its truth.'
+
+_ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE._--'That region of the universe of romance which
+Mr. Haggard has opened up is better worth a visit than any that has
+been explored for many a long year.'
+
+_WORLD._--'There is invention and fancy enough in these three hundred
+pages to furnish all the circulating libraries in the kingdom for a
+year.... As rich and original a piece of romance as any our age has
+seen.'
+
+_TIMES._--'It is too wondrous to be told except in the words of the
+Author himself. Worthy of Poe is the scene of the vast charnel-house....
+On the other hand, the pages of "Vathek" could hardly show finer
+imagery than we meet here.'
+
+_SPECTATOR._--'At every stage of the story we feel persuaded that the
+Author must have exhausted his resources, and that the interest must
+begin to decline. As a matter of fact, this is not the case. At almost
+every page the weird interest of the story rises.'
+
+                            *      *      *
+
+London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of HE, by Andrew Lang
+
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