yet excited imagination it seemed as though Death had already
touched them. My mind's eye singled out those who were sealed to
slaughter, and there rushed in upon my heart a great sense of the
mystery of human life, and an overwhelming sorrow at its futility and
sadness. To-night these thousand slept their healthy sleep, to-morrow
they, and many others with them, ourselves perhaps among them, would be
stiffening in the cold; their wives would be widows, their children
fatherless, and their place know them no more for ever. Only the old
moon would shine on serenely, the night wind would stir the grasses,
and the wide earth would take its rest, even as it did aeons before we
were, and will do aeons after we have been forgotten.

Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument,
remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still
stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke
yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we
have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and
sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends--the end from which he
fled aghast will surely overtake us also!

Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres,
but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once
been, can never _die_, though they blend and change, and change again
for ever.

All sorts of reflections of this nature passed through my mind--for as
I grow older I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems
to be getting a hold of me--while I stood and stared at those grim yet
fantastic lines of warriors, sleeping, as their saying goes, "upon
their spears."

"Curtis," I said, "I am in a condition of pitiable fear."

Sir Henry stroked his yellow beard and laughed, as he answered--

"I have heard you make that sort of remark before, Quatermain."

"Well, I mean it now. Do you know, I very much doubt if one of us will
be alive to-morrow night. We shall be attacked in overwhelming force,
and it is quite a chance if we can hold this place."

"We'll give a good account of some of them, at any rate. Look here,
Quatermain, this business is nasty, and one with which, properly
speaking, we ought not to be mixed up, but we are in for it, so we must
make the best of our job. Speaking personally, I had rather be killed
fighting than any other way, and now that there seems little chance of