At length my mind returned to me.  It was reborn very slowly and with horrible convulsions, out of the womb of death and terror.  I saw blood flowing round me in rivers, I heard the cries of triumph and of agony.  I saw myself standing, the sole survivor, on a grey field of death, and the utter loneliness of it ate into my soul, so that with all its strength it prayed that it might be numbered in this harvest.  But oh! it was so strong, that soul which could not, would not die or fly away.  So strong, that then, for the first time, I understood its immortality and that it could never die.  This everlasting thing still clung for a while to the body of its humiliation, the mass of clay and nerves and appetites which it was doomed to animate, and yet knew its own separateness and eternal individuality.  Striving to be free of earth, still it seemed to walk the earth, a spirit and a shadow, aware of the hatefulness of that to which it was chained, as we might imagine some lovely butterfly to be that is fated by nature to suck its strength from carrion, and remains unable to soar away into the clean air of heaven.

Something touched my hand and I reflected dreamily that if I had been still alive, for in a way I believed that I was dead, I should have thought it was a dog’s tongue.  With a great effort I lifted my arm, opened my eyes and looked at the hand against the light, for there was light, to see it was so thin that this light shone through between the bones.  Then I let it fall again, and lo! it rested on the head of a dog which went on licking it.

A dog!  What dog?  Now I remembered; one that I had found on the field of Isandhlwana.  Then I must be still alive.  The thought made me cry, for I could feel the tears run down my cheeks, not with joy but with sorrow.  I did not wish to go on living.  Life was too full of struggle and of bloodshed and bereavement and fear and all horrible things.  I was prepared to exchange my part in it just for rest, for the blessing of deep, unending sleep in which no more dreams could come, no more cups of joy could be held to thirsting lips, only to be snatched away.

I heard something shuffling towards me at which the dog growled, then seemed to slink away as though it were afraid.  I opened my eyes again, looked, and closed them once more in terror, for what I saw suggested that perhaps I was dead after all and had reached that hell which a certain class of earnest Christian promises to us as the reward of the failings that Nature and those who begat us have handed on to us as a birth doom.  It was something unnatural, grey-headed, terrific—­doubtless a devil come to torment me in the inquisition vaults of Hades.  Yet I had known the like when I was alive.  How had it been called?  I remembered, “The-thing-that-never-should-have-been-born.”  Hark!  It was speaking in that full deep voice which was unlike to any other.

“Greeting, Macumazahn,” it said.  “I see that you have come back from among the dead with whom you have been dwelling for a moon and more.  It is not wise of you, Macumazahn, yet I am glad who have matched my skill against Death and won, for now you will have much to tell me about his kingdom.”