“No; every accident is a providence.  Before a providence snaps every human will.”

“Shall I die at last, ages and ages hence, by the slow, though inevitable, growth of time, or by the cause that I call accident?”

“By a cause you call accident.”

“Is not the end still remote?” asked the whisper, with a slight tremor.

“Regarded as my life regards time, it is still remote.”

“And shall I, before then, mix with the world of men as I did ere I learned these secrets, resume eager interest in their strife and their trouble—­battle with ambition, and use the power of the sage to win the power that belongs to kings?”

“You will yet play a part on the earth that will fill earth with commotion and amaze.  For wondrous designs have you, a wonder yourself, been permitted to live on through the centuries.  All the secrets you have stored will then have their uses—­all that now makes you a stranger amidst the generations will contribute then to make you their lord.  As the trees and the straws are drawn into a whirlpool—­as they spin round, are sucked to the deep, and again tossed aloft by the eddies, so shall races and thrones be plucked into the charm of your vortex.  Awful Destroyer—­but in destroying, made, against your own will, a Constructor!”

“And that date, too, is far off?”

“Far off; when it comes, think your end in this world is at hand!”

“How and what is the end?  Look east, west, south, and north.”

“In the north, where you never yet trod towards the point whence your instincts have warned you, there a spectre will seize you.  ’Tis Death!  I see a ship—­it is haunted—­’tis chased—­it sails on.  Baffled navies sail after that ship.  It enters the region of ice.  It passes a sky red with meteors.  Two moons stand on high, over ice-reefs.  I see the ship locked between white defiles—­they are ice-rocks.  I see the dead strew the decks—­stark and livid, green mould on their limbs.  All are dead but one man—­it is you!  But years, though so slowly they come, have then scathed you.  There is the coming of age on your brow, and the will is relaxed in the cells of the brain.  Still that will, though enfeebled, exceeds all that man knew before you, through the will you live on, gnawed with famine; and nature no longer obeys you in that death-spreading region; the sky is a sky of iron, and the air has iron clamps, and the ice-rocks wedge in the ship.  Hark how it cracks and groans.  Ice will imbed it as amber imbeds a straw.  And a man has gone forth, living yet, from the ship and its dead; and he has clambered up the spikes of an iceberg, and the two moons gaze down on his form.  That man is yourself; and terror is on you—­terror; and terror has swallowed your will.  And I see swarming up the steep ice-rock, grey grisly things.  The bears of the north have scented their quarry—­they come near you and nearer, shambling and rolling their bulk.  And in that day every moment shall seem to you longer than the centuries through which you have passed.  And heed this—­after life, moments continued make the bliss or the hell of eternity.”