hat when I loose the bonds of your
mortality and send out your soul to wander in the depths of Death, as
I believe that I can do, though even of this I am not certain--you
must pass through a gate of terrors that may be closed behind you by a
stronger arm than mine. Moreover, what you will find beyond it I do not
know, since be sure of this, each of us has his own heaven or his own
hell, or both, that soon or late he is doomed to travel. Now will you go
forward, or go back? Make choice while there is still time."

At all this ominous talk I felt my heart shrivel like a fire-withered
leaf, if I may use that figure, and my blood assume the temperature
and consistency of ice-cream. Earnestly did I curse myself for having
allowed my curiosity about matters which we are not meant to understand
to bring me to the edge of such a choice. Swiftly I determined to
temporise, which I did by asking Ayesha whether she would accompany me
upon this eerie expedition.

She laughed a little as she answered,

"Bethink you, Allan. Am I, whose face you have seen, a meet companion
for a man who desires to visit the loves that once were his? What would
they say or think, if they should see you hand in hand with such a one?"

"I don't know and don't care," I replied desperately, "but this is the
kind of journey on which one requires a guide who knows the road. Cannot
Umslopogaas go first and come back to tell me how it has fared with
him?"

"If the brave and instructed white lord, panoplied in the world's last
Faith, is not ashamed to throw the savage in his ignorance out like a
feather to test the winds of hell and watch the while to learn whether
these blow him back unscorched, or waft him into fires whence there is
no return, perchance it might so be ordered, Allan. Ask him yourself,
Allan, if he is willing to run this errand for your sake. Or perhaps the
little yellow man----" and she paused.

At this point Hans, who having a smattering of Arabic understood
something of our talk, could contain himself no longer.

"No, Baas," he broke in from his corner by the curtain, "not _me_. I
don't care for hunting spooks, Baas, which leave no spoor that you can
follow and are always behind when you think they are in front. Also
there are too many of them waiting for me down there and how can I stand
up to them until I am a spook myself and know their ways of fighting?
Also if you should die when your spirit is away, I want to be left that
I ma