.

Still, now that my life is over, I am glad to have lived, glad
to have known the dear breath of woman's love, and that true
friendship which can even surpass the love of woman, glad to
have heard the laughter of little children, to have seen the
sun and the moon and the stars, to have felt the kiss of the
salt sea on my face, and watched the wild game trek down to the
water in the moonlight. But I should not wish to live again!

Everything is changing to me. The darkness draws near, and the
light departs. And yet it seems to me that through that darkness
I can already see the shining welcome of many a long-lost face.
Harry is there, and others; one above all, to my mind the sweetest
and most perfect woman that ever gladdened this grey earth.
But of her I have already written elsewhere, and at length, so
why speak of her now? Why speak of her after this long silence,
now that she is again so near to me, now that I go where she
has gone?

The sinking sun is turning the golden roof of the great Temple
to a fiery flame, and my fingers tire.

So to all who have known me, or known of me, to all who can think
one kindly thought of the old hunter, I stretch out my hand from
the far-off shore and bid a long farewell.

And now into the hands of Almighty God, who sent it, do I commit
my spirit.

'_I have spoken,_' as the Zulus say.

CHAPTER XXIV

BY ANOTHER HAND

A year has elapsed since our most dear friend Allan Quatermain
wrote the words '_I have spoken_' at the end of his record of
our adventures. Nor should I have ventured to make any additions
to the record had it not happened that by a most strange accident
a chance has arisen of its being conveyed to England. The chance
is but a faint one, it is true; but, as it is not probable that
another will arise in our lifetimes, Good and myself think that
we may as well avail ourselves of it, such as it is. During the
last six months several Frontier Commissions have been at work
on the various boundaries of Zu-Vendis, with a view of discovering
whether there exists any possible means of ingress or egress from
the country, with the result that a channel of communication
with the outer world hitherto overlooked has been discovered.
This channel, apparently the only one (for I have discovered that
it was by it that the native who ultimately reached Mr Mackenzie's
mission station, and whose arrival in the country, together with
the fact of his expulsi