When I had passed on all this speech to Ayesha, her comment on it was,

“This black Captain has a spirit as brave as his body, but how is it with your spirit, Allan?  Are you also prepared to risk so much?  Learn that I can promise you nothing, save that 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 may bury you nicely.”

“Be silent,” I said in my sternest manner.  Then, unable to bear more of Ayesha’s mockery, for I felt that as usual she was mocking me, I added with all the dignity that I could command,