on you. Do you forget what I told you of the danger
which the Dervish declared no bribe I could offer could tempt him a
second time to brave?"

"I remember now; those words had passed away from my mind."

"And because they had passed away from your mind, I chose you for my
comrade. I need a man by whom danger is scorned."

"But in the process of which you tell me I see no possible danger unless
the ingredients you mix in your caldron have poisonous fumes."

"It is not that. The ingredients I use are not poisons."

"What other danger, except you dread your own Eastern slaves? But, if
so, why lead them to these solitudes; and, if so, why not bid me be
armed?"

"The Eastern slaves, fulfilling my commands, wait for my summons where
their eyes cannot see what we do. The danger is of a kind in which
the boldest son of the East would be more craven, perhaps, than the
daintiest Sybarite of Europe, who would shrink from a panther and laugh
at a ghost. In the creed of the Dervish, and of all who adventure into
that realm of nature which is closed to philosophy and open to magic,
there are races in the magnitude of space unseen as animalcules in the
world of a drop. For the tribes of the drop, science has its microscope.
Of the host of yon azure Infinite magic gains sight, and through them
gains command over fluid conductors that link all the parts of creation.
Of these races, some are wholly indifferent to man, some benign to him,
and some dreadly hostile. In all the regular and prescribed conditions
of mortal being, this magic realm seems as blank and tenantless as yon
vacant air. But when a seeker of powers beyond the rude functions by
which man plies the clockwork that measures his hours, and stops when
its chain reaches the end of its coil, strives to pass over those
boundaries at which philosophy says, 'Knowledge ends,'--then he is like
all other travellers in regions unknown; he must propitiate or brave the
tribes that are hostile,--must depend for his life on the tribes that
are friendly. Though your science discredits the alchemist's dogmas,
your learning informs you that all alchemists were not ignorant
impostors; yet those whose discoveries prove them to have been the
nearest allies to your practical knowledge, ever hint in their mystical
works at the reality of that realm which is open to magic,--ever hint
that some means less familiar than furnace and bellows are essential
to him who explores the elixir of life.