So it was Zikali—­Zikali who had butchered my friends.

“Away from me, murderer!” I said faintly, “and let me die, or kill me as you did the others.”

He laughed, but very softly, not in his usual terrific fashion, repeating the word “murderer” two or three times.  Then with his great hand he lifted my head gently as a woman might, saying—­

“Look before you, Macumazahn.”

I looked and saw that I was in some kind of a cave.  Outside the sun was setting and against its brightness I perceived two figures, a white man and a white woman who were walking hand in hand and gazing into each other’s eyes.  They were Anscombe and Heda passing the mouth of the cave.

“Behold the murdered, O Macumazahn, dealer of hard words.”

“It is only a trick,” I murmured.  “Kaatje saw them dead and buried.”

“Yes, yes, I forgot.  The fat fool-woman saw them dead and buried.  Well, sometimes the dead come to life again and for good purpose, as you should know, Macumazahn, who followed the counsel of a certain Mameena and wandered here instead of rushing onto the Zulu spears.”

I tried to think the thing out and could not, so only asked—­

“How did I come?  What happened to me?”

“I think the sun smote you first who had no covering on your head and the lightning smote you afterwards.  Yet all the while that reason had left you, One led your horse and after the Heavens had tried to kill you and failed, perhaps because my magic was too strong for them, One sent that beast which you found, yes, sent it here to lead us to where you lay.  There you were discovered and brought hither.  Now sleep lest you should go further than even I can fetch you back again.”

He held his hands above my head, seeming to grow in stature till his white hair touched the roof of the cave, and in an instant I fancied that I was falling away, deep, deep into a gulf of nothingness.

There followed another period of dreaming, in which dreams I seemed to meet all sorts of people, dead and living, especially Lady Ragnall, a friend of mine with whom I had been concerned in a very strange adventure among the Kendah people* and with whom in days to come I was destined to be concerned again, although of course I knew nothing of this, in a still stranger adventure of what I may call a spiritual order, which I may or may not try to reduce to writing.  It seemed to me that I was constantly dining with her tete-a-tete and that she told me all sorts of queer things between the courses.  Doubtless these illusions occurred when I was fed.

[*—­See the book called The Ivory Child.—­EDITOR.]

At length I woke up again, feeling much stronger, and saw the dog, Lost, watching me with its great tender eyes—­oh! they talk of the eyes of women, but are they ever as beautiful as those of a loving dog?  It lay by my low bed-stead, a rough affair fashioned of poles and strung with rimpis or strings of raw hide, and by it, stroking its head, sat the witch-doctoress, Nombe.  I remember how pleasing she looked, a perfect type of the eternal feminine with her graceful, rounded shape and her continual, mysterious smile which suggested so much more than any mortal woman has to give.