 INTRODUCTION OF SHE In giving to the world the record of what looked at as an adventure only, is I suppose one of the most wonderful and mysterious experiences ever undergone by mortal men, I feel it incumbent on me to explain what my exact connection with it is. And so I may as well say at once that I am not the narrator, but only the editor of this extraordinary history, and then go on to tell how it found its way into my hands. Some years ago I, the editor, was stopping with a friend via doctismus et amicus neus at a certain university, which for the purposes of this history we will call Cambridge, and was one day much struck with the appearance of two persons whom I saw going arm in arm down the street. One of these gentlemen was, I think, without exception, the handsomest young fellow I have ever seen. He was very tall, very broad, and had a look of power and a grace of bearing that seemed as native to him as it is to a wild stag. In addition his face was almost without flaw, a good face as well as a beautiful one, and when he lifted his hat, which he did just then to a passing lady, I saw that his head was covered with little gold and curls growing close to the scalp. Good gracious, I said to my friend with whom I was walking, why that fellow looks like a statue of Apollo come to life, what a splendid man he is. Yes, he answered, he is the handsomest man in the university and one of the nicest, too. They call him the Greek God. But look at the other one. He's Vinces, that's the God's name, Guardian, and supposed to be full of every kind of information. They call him Sharon. I looked and found the older man quite as interesting in his way as the glorified specimen of humanity at his side. He appeared to be about forty years of age and was, I think, as ugly as his companion was handsome. To begin with, he was shortish, rather bow-legged, very deep-chested, and with unusually long arms. He had dark hair and small eyes, and the hair grew right down on his forehead, and his whiskers grew right up to his hair so that there was uncommonly little of his countenance to be seen. All together he reminded me forcibly of a gorilla, and yet there was something very pleasing and genial about the man's eye. I remember saying that I should like to know him. All right, answered my friend, nothing easier. I know, Vincy, I'll introduce you. And he did, and for some minutes we stood chatting about the Zulu people, I think, for I had just returned from the Cape at the time. Presently, however, a stoutish lady, whose name I do not remember, came along the pavement accompanied by a pretty fair-haired girl, and these two, Mr. Vincy, who clearly knew them well, at once joined, walking off in their company. I remember being rather amused because of the change in the expression of the elder man, whose name I discovered was Holly, when he saw the ladies advancing. He suddenly stopped short in his talk, cast a reproachful look at his companion, and with an abrupt nod to myself, turned and marched off alone across the street. I heard afterwards that he was popularly supposed to be as much afraid of a woman as most people are of a mad dog, which accounted for his precipitate retreat. I cannot say, however, that young Vincy showed much aversion to feminine society on this occasion. Indeed, I remember laughing and remarking to my friend at the time that he was not the sort of man whom it would be desirable to introduce to the lady one was going to marry, since it was exceedingly probable that the acquaintance would end in a transfer of her afflictions. He was altogether too good-looking, and what is more, he had none of that consciousness and conceit about him which usually afflicts handsome men, and makes them deservedly disliked by their fellows. That same evening my visit came to an end, and this was the last I saw or heard of Charon and the Greek god for many a long day. Indeed, I have never seen either of them from that hour to this, and do not think it probable that I shall. But a month ago I received a letter and two packets, one of manuscript, and on opening the first found that was signed by Horace Holley, a name that at that moment was not familiar to me. It ran as follows. Blank College, Cambridge, May 1st, 18 Blank. My dear sir, you will be surprised considering the very slight nature of our acquaintance to get a letter from me. Indeed, I think I had better begin by reminding you that we once met, now some five years ago, when I and my ward Leo Vinci were introduced to you in the street at Cambridge. To be brief and come to my business. I have recently read with much interest a book of yours describing a Central African adventure. I take it that this book is partly true and partly an effort of the imagination. However this may be, it has given me an idea. It happens, how you will see in the accompanying manuscript, which together with the scarab, the royal son of the sun, and the original shard I am sending to you by hand, that my ward, or rather my adopted son Leo Vinci and myself, have recently passed through a real African adventure of a nature so much more marvellous than the one which you describe, that to tell the truth I am almost ashamed to submit it to you lest you should disbelieve my tale. You will see it stated in this manuscript that I, or rather we, have made up our minds not to make this history public during our joint lives, nor should we alter our determination were it not for a circumstance which has recently arisen. We are, for reasons that, after prusing this manuscript you may be able to guess, going away again this time to Central Asia where, if anywhere upon this earth, wisdom is to be found, and we anticipate that our sojourn there will be a long one. Possibly we shall not return. Under these altered conditions it has become a question whether we are justified in withholding from the world an account of a phenomenon which we believe to be of unparalleled interest, merely because our private life is involved, or because we are afraid of ridicule and doubt being cast upon our statements. I hold one view about this matter, and Leo holds another. And finally, after much discussion we have come to a compromise, namely to send the history to you, giving you full leave to publish it if you think fit, the only stipulation being that you shall disguise our real names, and as much concerning our personal identity as is consistent with the maintenance of the bona fides of the narrative. And now what am I to say further? I really do not know, beyond once more repeating that everything is described in the accompanying manuscript exactly as it happened. As regards she herself I have nothing to add. Day by day we gave greater occasion to regret that we did not better avail ourselves of our opportunities to obtain more information from that marvellous woman. Who was she? How did she first come to the caves of Cor and what was her real religion? We never ascertained, and now, alas, we never shall—at least not yet. These and many other questions arise in my mind, but what is the good of asking them now? Will you undertake the task? We give you complete freedom, and as a reward you will, we believe, have the credit of presenting to the world the most wonderful history as distinguished from romance that its records can show. Read the manuscript, which I have copied out fairly for your benefit, and let me know. Believe me, very truly yours, L. Horace Holley. This name is varied throughout the accordance with the writer's request, P.S. Of course, if any profit results from the sale of the writing, should you care to undertake its publication, you can do what you like with it. But if there is a loss, I will leave instructions with my lawyers, Messrs. Jeffrey and Jordan, to meet it. We entrust the shard, the scarab, and the parchment to your keeping, till such time as we demand them back again. L. H. H. This letter, as may be imagined, astonished me considerably. But when I came to look at the manuscript, which the pressure of other work prevented me from doing for a fortnight, I was still more astonished, as I think the reader will be also, and it once made up my mind to press on with the matter. I wrote to this effect to Mr. Holley, but a week afterwards received a letter from that gentleman's lawyers, returning my own, with the information that their client, and Mr. Leo Vincy, had already left this country for Tibet, and they did not at present know their address. Well, that is all I have to say. Of the history itself the reader must judge. I give it him, with the exception of a very few alterations, made with the object of concealing the identity of their actors from the general public, exactly as it came to me. Personally, I made up my mind to refrain from comments. At first I was inclined to believe that this history of a woman on whom, clothed in the majesty of her almost endless years, the shadow of eternity itself lay like the dark wing of night, was some gigantic allegory of which I could not catch the meaning. Then I thought that it might be a bold attempt to portray the possible results of practical immortality, informing the substance of a mortal who yet drew her strength from earth, and in whose human bosom passions yet rose and fell and beat, as in the undying world around her, the winds and the tides rise and fall and beat unceasingly. But as I went on, I abandoned that idea also. To me the story seems to bear the stamp of truth upon its face. Its explanation I must leave to others. And with this slight preface, which circumstances make necessary, I introduce the world to Ayesha and a case of core. THE EDITOR P.S. There is on consideration one circumstance that after a re-perusal of this history struck me with so much force, that I cannot resist calling the attention of the reader to it. He will observe that so far as we are made acquainted with him, there appears to be nothing in the character of Leovincy, which in the opinion of most people would have been likely to attract an intellect so powerful as that of Ayesha. He is not even, at any rate to my view, particularly interesting. Indeed, one might imagine that Mr. Holly would, under ordinary circumstances, have easily outstripped him in the favour of she. Can it be that extremes meet, and that the very excess and splendour of her mind led her by means of some strange physical reaction to worship at the shrine of matter? Was that ancient calicratus nothing but a splendid animal loved for his hereditary Greek beauty? Or is the true explanation what I believe it to be? Namely, that Ayesha, seeing further than we can see, perceived the germ and smoldering spark of greatness which lay hid within her lover's soul, and well knew that under the influence of her gift of life, watered by her wisdom, and shone upon with the sunshine of her presence, it would bloom like a flower and flash out like a star, filling the world with light and fragrance? Here also I am not able to answer, but must leave the reader to form his own judgment on the facts before him, as detailed by Mr. Holly in the following pages. My visitor! There are some events of which each circumstance and surrounding detail seems to be graven on the memory in such a fashion that we cannot forget it. And so it is with the scene that I am about to describe. It rises as clearly before my mind at this moment, as though it had happened but yesterday. It was in this very month something over twenty years ago, the Thai, Ludwig Horris Holly, was sitting one night in my rooms at Cambridge, grinding away at some mathematical work, I forget what. I was to go up for my fellowship within a week, and was expected by my tutor and my college generally to distinguish myself. At last, worried out, I flung my book down, and, going to the mental place, took down a pipe and filled it. There was a candle burning on the mental piece, and a long, narrow glass at the back of it. And as I was in the act of lighting the pipe, I caught sight of my own countenance in the glass, and paused to reflect. The lighted match burned away till it scorched my fingers, forcing me to drop it. But still I stood instead at myself in the glass, and reflected. Well, I said aloud at last, it is to be hoped that I shall be able to do something with the inside of my head, for I shall certainly never be anything by the help of the outside. This remark will doubtless strike anybody who reads it as being slightly obscure. But I was in reality alluding to my physical deficiencies. Most men of twenty-two are endowed at any rate with some share of the comeliness of youth. But to me even this was denied. Short, thick-set, and deep-chested, almost a deformity, with long, sinewy arms, heavy features, deep-set grey eyes, a low brow half ever grown with a mop of thick black hair, like a deserted clearing on which the forest had once more begun to encroach. Such was my appearance nearly a quarter of a century ago, and such, with some modification, it is to this day. Like cane I was branded, branded by nature with the stamp of abnormal ugliness, as I was gifted by nature with iron and abnormal strength, and considerable intellectual powers. So ugly was I that the spruce young men of my college, though they were proud enough in my feats of endurance and physical prowess, did not even care to be seen walking with me. Was it wonderful that I was misanthropic and fallen? Was it wonderful that I brooded and worked alone and had no friends? At least only one? I was set apart by nature to live alone, and drew comfort from her breast and hers only. Women hated the sight of me. Only a week before I had heard one call me a monster when she thought I was out of hearing, and say that I had converted her to the monkey theory. Once, indeed, a woman pretended to care for me, and I lavaged all the pent-up affection of my nature upon her. Then money that was to have come to me went elsewhere, and she discarded me. I pleaded with her as I have never pleaded with any living creature before or since. For I was caught by her sweet face and loved her. And in the end, by way of answer, she took me to the glass, and stood side by side with me, and looked into it. Now, she said, if I am beauty, who are you? That was when I was only twenty. And as I stood and stared, and felt a sort of grim satisfaction in the sense of my own loneliness, for I had neither father, nor mother, nor brother. And as I did so, they came and knocked at my door. I listened before I went to open it, for it was nearly twelve o'clock at night, and I was in no mood to admit any stranger. I had with one friend in the college, or indeed in the world, perhaps it was he. Just then the person outside the door coughed, and I hastened to open it, for I knew the cough. A tall man of about thirty, with the remains of great personal beauty, came hurrying in, staggering beneath the weight of a massive iron box, which he carried by handle with his right hand. He placed the box upon the table, and then fell into an awful fit of coughing. He coughed and coughed till his face became quite purple, and at last he sunk into a chair, and began to spit up blood. I poured out some whisky into a tumbler, and gave it to him. He drank it, and seemed better. Though his better was very bad indeed. Why did you keep me standing there in the cold? He asked pettishly, you know the drafts are deaf to me. I did not know who it was, I answered, you are a late visitor. Yes, and I verily believe it to be my last visit. He answered, with a ghastly attempt to smile. I am done for, Holly, I am done for. I do not believe that I shall see to-morrow. Nonsense! I said, let me go for a doctor. He waved me back imperiously with his hand. It is sober sense, but I want no doctors. I have studied medicine, and I know all about it. No doctors can help me. My last hour has come. For a year past I have lived only by a miracle. Now, listen to me as you have never listened to anybody before, for you will not have the opportunity of getting me to repeat my words. We have been friends for two years. Now, tell me how much do you know about me? I know that you are rich, and have a fancy to come to college long after the age that most men leave it. I know that you have been married, and that your wife died, and that you have been the best, indeed almost the only friend I ever had. Did you know that I have a son? No. I have. He is five years old. He cost me his mother's life, and I have never been able to bear to look upon his face in consequence. Holly, if you will accept the trust, I am going to leave you the boy's sole guardian. I sprang almost out of my chair. Me? I said. Yes, you. I have not studied you for two years for nothing. I have known for some time that I could not last, and since I realised the fact I had been searching for someone to whom I could confide the boy and this, and de-tap the iron box. You are the man, Holly. For, like a rugged tree, you are hard and sound at core. Listen, the boy will be the only representative of one of the most ancient families in the world, that is, so far as families can be traced. You will laugh at me when I say it, but one day it will be proved to you beyond a doubt that my sixty-fifth or sixty-sixth lineal ancestor was an Egyptian priest of Isis, though he was himself a Grecian extraction, and was called Calacratus, open bracket, the strong and beautiful, or more accurately the beautiful in strength, closed bracket. His father was one of the Greek mercenaries raised by Hathor, a Mendocian fairer of the 29th dynasty, and his grandfather, or great-grandfather, I believe, was at very Calacratus, mentioned by Herodotus, in or about the year 339 BC, just at the time of the final fall of the pharaohs. This Calacratus, the priest, broke his vows of celibacy, and fled from Egypt with a princess of royal blood, who had fallen in love with him, and was finally wracked upon the coast of Africa, somewhere, as I believe, in the neighborhood of where Delagoa Bay now is, or rather to the north of it. He and his wife being saved, and all the remainder of their company destroyed in one way or another. Here they endured great hardships, but were at length entertained by the mighty queen of a savage people, a white woman of peculiar loveliness, who, under circumstances which I cannot enter into, but which you will one day learn, if you live, from the contents of the box, finally murdered my ancestor Calacratus. His wife, however, escaped, how I know not, to Athens, bearing a child with her, whom she named as Thyssenes, or the mighty Avenger. Five hundred years or more afterwards, the family migrated to Rome, under circumstances of which no trace remains, and here, probably with the idea of preserving the idea of vengeance, where we find set out in the name of Thyssenes, they appear to have pretty regularly assumed the cognamen of Vindex, or Avenger. Here, too, they remained for another five centuries or more, till about 770 AD, when Charlemagne invaded Lombardy, where they were then settled, whereon the head of her family seemed to have attached himself to the great emperor, and to have returned with him across the Alps, and finally to have settled in Brittany. Eight generations later his lineal representative crossed to England in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and in the time of William the Conqueror, was advanced to great honour and power. From that time to the present day I can trace my descent without a break. Not that the Vinces, for that was the final corruption of the name after its bearers took root in English soil, had been particularly distinguished, they never came much to the fore. Sometimes they were soldiers, sometimes merchants, but on the whole they have preserved a dead level of respectability, and still a deader level of mediocrity. From the time of Charles II till the beginning of the present century they were merchants. About 1790 my grandfather made a considerable fortune out of brewing, and retired. In 1821 he died, and my father succeeded him, and dissipated most of the money. Ten years ago he died also, leaving me a net income of about two thousand a year. Then it was that I undertook an expedition in connection with that, and he pointed to the iron chest, which ended disastrously enough. On my way back I travelled in the south of Europe, and finally reached Athens. There I met my beloved wife, who might well also have been called beautiful, like my old weak ancestor. There I married her, and there a year afterwards, when my boy was born, she died. He paused a while, his head sunk upon his hand, and then continued. My marriage had diverted me from a project which I cannot enter into now. I have no time, Holly, I have no time. One day, if you accept my trust, you will learn about it. After my wife's death I turned my mind to it again. But first it was necessary, or at least I concede that it was necessary, that I should attain to perfect knowledge of Eastern dialects, especially Arabic. It was to facilitate my studies that I came here. Very soon, however, my disease developed itself, and now there is an end of me. And as though to emphasise his words, he burst into another terrible fit of coughing. I gave him some more whisky, and after resting he went on. I have never seen my boy, Leo, since he was a tiny baby. I never could bear to see him, but they tell me that he is a quick and handsome child. In this envelope, and he produced a letter from his pocket addressed to myself, I have jotted down the course I wish followed in the boy's education. It is a somewhat peculiar one. At any rate, I could not entrust it to a stranger. Once more, will you undertake it? I must first know what I am to undertake, I answered. You are to undertake to have the boy, Leo, to live with you till he is twenty-five years of age, not to send him to school, remember. On his twenty-fifth birthday your guardianship will end, and you will then, with the keys that I give you now, and you place them on the table, open the iron box, and let him see and read the contents, and say whether or not he is willing to undertake the quest. There is no obligation on him to do so. Now, as regards terms, my present income is two thousand two hundred a year. Half of that income I have secured to you by will for life, contingently on your undertaking the guardianship. That is, one thousand a year, remuneration to yourself, for you will have to give up your life to it, and one hundred a year to pay for the board of the boy. The rest is to accumulate till Leo is twenty-five, so that there may be a sum in hand should you wish to undertake the quest of which I spoke. And suppose I were to die, I asked. Then the boy must become a ward of chancery and take his chance. Only be careful that the iron chest is passed on to him by your will. Listen, Holly, don't refuse me. Believe me, this is to your advantage. You are not fit to mix with the world. It would only imbiter you. In a few weeks you will become a fellow of your college, and the income that you will derive from that, combined with what I have left you, will enable you to live a life of learned leisure, alternated with the sport of which you are so fond, such as will exactly suit you. He paused and looked at me anxiously, but I still hesitated. The charge seemed so very strange. For my sake, Holly, we have been good friends, and I have no time to make other arrangements. Very well, I said, I will do it, provided there is nothing in this paper to make me change my mind. And I touched the envelope he had put upon the table by the keys. Thank you, Holly, thank you. There is nothing at all. Swear to me by God that you will be a father to the boy, and follow my directions to the letter. I swear it. I answered solemnly. Very well. Remember that perhaps one day I shall ask for the account of your oath, for though I am dead and forgotten, yet I shall live. There is no such thing as death, Holly, only a change. And, as you may perhaps learn in time to come, I believe that even that change could, under certain circumstances, be indefinitely postponed. And again he broke into one of his dreadful fits of coughing. There, he said, I must go, you have the chest, and my will will be found among my papers, under the authority of which the child will be handed over to you. You will be well paid, Holly, and I know that you are honest, but if you betray my trust, by heaven I will haunt you. I said nothing, being indeed tuber-wilder to speak. He held up the candle and looked at his own face in the glass. It had been a beautiful face, but disease had wrecked it. Food for the worms, he said, curious to think that in a few hours I shall be stiff and cold. The journey done, the little game played out. Ah, me, Holly, life is not worth the trouble of life, except when one is in love. At least, mine has not been. But the boy, Leo's, may be, if he has the courage and the faith. Goodbye, my friend. And with a sudden act of tenderness, he flung his arm about me and kissed me on the forehead, and then turned to go. Look here, Vincy, I said. If you're as ill as you think, you'd better let me fetch a doctor. No, no, he said earnestly. Promise me that you won't. I am going to die, and like a poisoned rat, I wish to die alone. I don't believe you're going to do anything of the sort, I answered. He smiled, and with the word, remember, on his lips, was gone. As for myself, I sat down and roared my eyes, wondering if I'd been asleep. As this supposition would not bear investigation, I gave it up, and began to think that Vincy must have been drinking. I knew that he was, and had been, very ill. But still it seemed impossible that he keep being such a condition, as to be able to know for certain that he would not outlive the night. Had he been so near to the solution, surely he would have scarcely been able to walk, and carry a heavy iron box with him. The whole story on reflection seemed to me utterly incredible. For I was not then old enough to be aware how many things happen in this world, that the common sense of the average man would set down as so improbable, as to be absolutely impossible. This is a fact which I've only recently mastered. Was it likely that a man would have a son five years of age, whom he had never seen since he was a tiny infant? No. Was it likely that he could foretell his own death so accurately? No. Was it likely that he could trace his pedigree for more than three centuries before Christ, or that he would suddenly confide the absolute guardianship of his child, and leave half his fortune to a college friend? Most certainly not. Clearly Vincy was either drunk or mad. That being so, what did it mean, and what was in the sealed iron chest? The whole thing baffled and puzzled me to such an extent that at last I could stand it no longer, and determined to sleep over it. So I jumped up, and having put the keys on the letter that Vincy had left, away into my dispatch box, and stowed the iron chest in a large portmanteau, I turned in, and was soon fast asleep. As it seemed to me I had only been asleep for a few minutes, when I was awakened by somebody calling me. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. It was broad daylight. Eight o'clock, in fact. Why, what is the matter with you, John? I asked on the jib who waited on Vincy and myself. You look as though you had seen a ghost. Yes, sir, and so I have. He answered, these ways I've seen a corpse, which is worse. I've been into call Mr. Vincy, as usual. And there he lies, stark and dead. The years roll by. As might be expected, poor Vincy's sudden death created a great stir in the college. But, as he was known to be very ill, and a satisfactory doctor's certificate was forthcoming, there was no inquest. They were not so particular about inquests in those days as they are now. Indeed, they were generally disliked because of the scandal. Under all these circumstances, being asked no questions, I did not feel called upon to volunteer any information about our interview on the night of Vincy's disease, beyond saying that he had come into my rooms to see me, as he often did. On the day of the funeral, a lawyer came down from London and followed my poor friends' remains to the grave, and then went back with his papers and effects, except, of course, the iron chest which had been left in my keeping. For a week after this I heard no more of the matter, and indeed my attention was amply occupied in other ways, for I was up for my fellowship, a fact that had prevented me from attending the funeral or seeing the lawyer. At last, however, the examination was over, and I came back to my rooms and sank into an easy chair with a happy consciousness that I had got through it very fairly. Soon, however, my thoughts, relief of the pressure that had crushed them into a single groove during the last few days, turned to the events of the night of poor Vincy's death, and again I asked myself what it all meant and wondered if I should hear anything more of the matter, and if I did not, what it would be my duty to do with the curious iron chest. I sat there and thought and thought till I began to grow quite disturbed over the whole occurrence. The mysterious midnight visit, the prophecy of death so shortly to be fulfilled, the solemn oath that I had taken, and which Vincy had called on me to answer to in another world than this. Had the man committed suicide? It looked like it. And what was the quest of which he spoke? The circumstances were uncanny, so much so that, though I am by no means nervous or apt to be alarmed at anything that may seem to cross the bounds of the natural, I grew afraid, and began to wish I had nothing to do with them. How much more do I wish it now, over twenty years afterwards? As I sat and thought, there came a knock at the door, and a letter, in a big blue envelope, was brought into me. I saw at a glance that it was a lawyer's letter, and an instinct told me that it was connected with my trust. The letter which I still have runs thus. Sir, our client, the late M. L. Vincy Esquire, who died on the ninth instant in Blank College, Cambridge, has left behind him a will of which you will please find copy enclosed, and of which we are the executors. Under this will you will perceive that you take a life interest in about half of the late M. Vincy's property, now invested in consuls, subject to your acceptance of the guardianship of his only son, L. Vincy, at present an infant aged five. Had we not ourselves drawn up the document in question, in obedience to M. Vincy's clear and precise instructions, both personal and written, and had he not then assured us that he had very good reasons for what he was doing, we are bound to tell you that its provisions seem to us of so unusual a nature that we should have bound to call the attention of the Court of Chantry to them, in order that such steps might be taken as seemed desirable to it, either by contesting the capacity of the testator or otherwise, to safeguard the interests of the infant. As it is, knowing that the testator was a gentleman of the highest intelligence and acumen, and that he has absolutely no relations living to whom he could have confided the guardianship of the child, we do not feel justified in taking this course. Awaiting such instructions as you pleased to send us as regards to the delivery of the infant and the payment of the proportion of the dividends due to you, we remain, sir, faithfully yours, Geoffrey and Jordan, Horace L. Holly Esquire. I put down the letter and ran my eye through the will, which appeared, from its utter unintelligibility, to have been drawn on the strictest legal principles. So far as I could discover, however, it exactly bore out what my friend Vincy had told me on the night of his death. So it was true after all. I must take the boy. Suddenly I remember the letter which Vincy had left with the chest. I fetched and opened it. It only contained such directions as he had already given to me as to opening the chest on Leo's twenty-fifth birthday, and laid down the outlines of the boy's education, which was to include Greek, the higher mathematics, and Arabic. At the end there was a post-script to the effect that if the boy died under the age of twenty-five, which, however, he did not believe would be the case, I was to open the chest and act on the information I obtained if I saw fit. If I did not see fit, I was to destroy all the contents. On no account was I to pass them on to a stranger. As this letter added nothing material to my knowledge, and certainly raised no further objection in my mind to entering on the task I had promised my dead friend to undertake, there was only one cause open to me. Namely, to write to Messers Jeffery and Jordan and express my acceptance of the trust, stating that I should be willing to commence my guardianship of Leo in ten days' time. This done, I went to the authorities of my college, and, having told them as much of the story as I considered desirable, which was not very much, after considerable difficulty, succeeded in persuading them to stretch a point, and, in the event of my having obtained a fellowship, which I was pretty certain I had done, allow me to have the child to live with me. Their consent, however, was only granted on the condition that I vacated my rooms in college and took lodgings. This I did, and with some difficulty succeeded in obtaining very good apartments quite close to the college gates. The next thing was to find a nurse. And on this point I came to a determination. I would have no woman to lord it over me about the child, and steal his affections from me. The boy was old enough to do without female assistance, so I set to work to hunt up a suitable male attendant. With some difficulty I succeeded in hiring a most respectable, round-faced young man who had been a helper in a hunting stable, but who said that he was one of a family of seventeen and well accustomed to the ways of children, and professed himself quite willing to undertake the charge of Master Leo when he arrived. Then, having taken the iron box to town, and with my own hands deposited it at my bankers, I bought some books upon the health and management of children, and read them first to myself, and then allowed to job. That was the young man's name. And waited. At length the child arrived in the charge of an elderly person who wept bitterly at parting with him, and a beautiful boy he was. Indeed, I do not think that I ever saw such a perfect child before or since. His eyes were gray, his forehead was broad, and his face, even at that early age, clean-cut as a cameo, without being pinched or thin. But perhaps his most attractive point was his hair, which was pure gold in color, and tightly curled over his shapely head. He cried a little when his nurse finally tore herself away and left him with us. Never shall I forget the scene. There he stood, with a sunlight from the window playing upon his golden curls, his fist screwed over one eye whilst he took us in with the other. I was seated in a chair, and stretched out my hand to him to induce him to come to me, while Job, in the corner, was making a sort of clocking noise, which, arguing from his previous experience, or from the analogy of the hen, he judged would have a soothing effect, and inspire confidence in the youthful mind, and running a wooden haws of peculiar hideousness backwards and forwards in a way that was little short of inane. This went on for some minutes, and then, all of a sudden, the lad stretched out both his little arms and ran to me. I like you, he said. You is ugly, but you is good. Ten minutes afterwards he was eating large slices of bread and butter, with every sign of satisfaction. Job wanted to put jam on to them, but I sternly reminded him of the excellent works that we had read, and forbade it. In a very little while, for, as I expected, I got my fellowship, the boy became the favourite of the whole college, where, all orders and regulations to the country notwithstanding, he was continually in and out, a sort of chartered libertine in whose favour all rules were relaxed. The offerings made at his shrine were simply without number, and I had serious difference of opinion with one old resident fellow, now long dead, who was usually supposed to be the crustiest man in the university, and uphold the sight of a child. And yet I discovered, when a frequently recurring fit of sickness had forced Job to keep a strict lookout, that this unprincipled old man was in the habit of enticing the boy to his rooms, and there feeding him upon unlimited quantities of brandy balls, and making him promise to say nothing about it. Job told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself, at his age too, when he might have been a grandfather if he had done what was right, by which Job understood had got married, and then arose the row. But I have no space to dwell upon those delightful years, around which memory still fondly hovers. One by one they went by, and as they passed we too grew dearer and yet more dear to each other. Few sons have been loved as I loved Leo, and few fathers know the deep and continuous affection that Leo bears to me. The child grew into the boy, and the boy into the young man, while one by one the remorseless years flew by, and as he grew and increased, so did his beauty, and the beauty of his mind grow with him. When he was about fifteen they used to call him Beauty about the college, and me they nicknamed the Beast. Beauty and the Beast was what they called us when we went out walking together as we used to do every day. Once Leo attacked a great strapping butcher's man, twice his size, because he sang it out after us, and thrashed him too, thrashed him fairly. I walked on and pretended not to see, till the combat got too exciting when I turned round and cheered him on to victory. It was the chaff of the college at the time, but I could not help it. Then, when he was a little older, the undergraduates found fresh names for us. They called me Karen, and Leo, the Greek God. I will pass over my own appellation with the humble remark that I was never handsome, and did not grow more so as I grew older. As for his, there was no doubt about its fitness. Leo at twenty-one might have stood for a statue of the youthful Apollo. I never saw anybody to touch him in looks, or anybody so absolutely unconscious of them. As for his mind, he was brilliant and keen-witted, but not a scholar. He had not the dullness necessary for that result. We followed out his father's instructions as regards his education strictly enough, and on the whole the results, especially in the matters of Greek and Arabic, were satisfactory. I learned the letter language in order to help to teach it to him, but after five years of it, he knew it as well as I did, almost as well as the professor who instructed us both. I always was a great sportsman. It is my one passion, and every autumn we went away somewhere, shooting or fishing, sometimes to Scotland, sometimes to Norway, once even to Russia. I am a good shot, but even in this he learned to excel me. When Leo was eighteen, I moved back into my rooms and entered him at my own college, and at twenty-one he took his degree, a respectable degree, but not a very high one. Then it was that I, for the first time, told him something of his own story, and of the mystery that loomed ahead. Of course, he was very curious about it, and of course I explained to him that his curiosity could not be gratified at present. After that, to pass the time away, I suggested that he should get himself called to the bar, and this he did, reading at Cambridge and only going up to London to eat his dinners. I had only one trouble about him, and that was that every young woman who came across him, or if not everyone, nearly so, would insist on falling in love with him. Hands arose difficulties which I need not enter into here, though they were troublesome enough at the time. On the whole he behaved fairly well. I cannot say more than that. And so the time went by till at last he reached his twenty-fifth birthday, at which date this strange and in some ways awful history really begins. End of chapter two. Chapter three of She. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. On the day preceding Leo's twenty-fifth birthday, we both journeyed to London and extracted the mysterious chest from the bank where I had deposited it twenty years before. It was, I remember, brought up by the same clerk who had taken it down. He perfectly remembered having hidden it away. Had he not done so, he said, he should have had difficulty in finding it. It was so covered up with cobwebs. In the evening we returned with our precious burden to Cambridge, and I think that we might both of us have given away all the sleep we got that night and not been much the poorer. At daybreak Leo arrived in my room in a dressing-gown and suggested that we should at once proceed to business. I scouted the idea as showing an unworthy curiosity. The chest had waited twenty years, I said, so it could very well continue to wait until after breakfast. Accordingly, at nine, an unusually sharp nine, we breakfasted, and so occupied was I with my own thoughts, that I regret to state that I put a piece of bacon into Leo's tea in restake of a lump of sugar. Job, too, to whom the contagion of excitement had, of course, spread, managed to break the handle off my Sever China tea-cup, the identical one I believe that Mara had been drinking from just before he was stabbed in his bath. At last, however, breakfast was cleared away, and Job, at my request, fetched the chest and placed it upon the table in a somewhat gingerly fashion as though he mistrusted it. Then he prepared to leave the room. Stop a moment, Job, I said. If Mr. Leo has no objection, I should prefer to have an independent witness to this business, who can be relied upon to hold his tongue unless he is asked to speak. Certainly Uncle Horace answered Leo, for I had brought him up to call me Uncle, though he varied the appellation somewhat disrespectfully by calling me old fellow or even my avuncular relative. Job touched his head not having a hat on. Lock the door, Job, I said, and bring me my dispatch box. He obeyed, and from the box I took the keys that poor Vincy, Leo's father, had given me on the night of his death. There were three of them, the largest a comparatively modern key, the second an exceedingly ancient one, and the third entirely unlike anything of the sort that we had ever seen before, being fashioned apparently from a strip of solid silver, with a bar placed across to serve as a handle, and leaving some nicks cut in the edge of the bar. It was more like a model of an anti-Diluvian railway key than anything else. Now, are you both ready, I said, as people do when they are going to fire a mine. There was no answer, so I took the big key, rubbed some salad oil into the wards, and after one or two bad shots, for my hands were shaking, managed to fit it and shoot the lock. Leo bent over and caught the massive lead in both his hands, and with an effort, for the hinges had rusted, forced it back. Its removal revealed another case covered with dust. This we extracted from the iron chest without any difficulty, and removed the accumulated filth of years from it with a cloth brush. It was, or appeared to be, of ebony or some such close-grained black wood, and was bound in every direction with flat bands of iron. Its antiquity must have been extreme, for the dense heavy wood was in parts actually commencing to crumble from age. Now for it, I said, inserting the second key. Job and Leo bent forward in breathless silence. The key turned, and I flung back the lid, and uttered an exclamation, and no wonder, for inside the ebony case was a magnificent silver casket, about twelve inches square by eight high. It appeared to be of Egyptian workmanship, and the four legs were formed of sphinxes, and the dome-shaped cover was also surmounted by a sphinx. The casket was of course much tarnished and dinted with age, but otherwise in fairly sound condition. I drew it out and set it on the table, and then in the midst of the most perfect silence I inserted the strange-looking silver key, and pressed this way and that until at last the lock yielded, and the casket stood before us. It was filled to the brim with some brown shredded material, more like vegetable fibre than paper, the nature of which I have never been able to discover. This I carefully removed to the depth of some three inches, when I came to a letter enclosed in an ordinary modern-looking envelope, and addressed in the handwriting of my dead friend Vincy. To my son Leo should he live to open this casket. I handed the letter to Leo, who glanced at the envelope, and then put it down upon the table, making a motion to me to go on emptying the casket. The next thing that I found was a parchment carefully rolled up. I unrolled it, and seeing that it was also in Vincy's handwriting, and headed, translation of the unsealed Greek writing on the pot shirt, put it down by the letter. Then followed another ancient roll of parchment, that had become yellow and crinkled with the passage of years. This I also unrolled. It was likewise a translation of the same Greek original, but into black letter Latin, which at the first glance from the style and character, appeared to me to date from somewhere about the beginning of the 16th century. Immediately beneath this roll was something hard and heavy, wrapped up in yellow linen, and reposing upon another layer of the fibrous material. Slowly and carefully we unrolled the linen, exposing to view a very large, but undoubtedly ancient pot shirt of a dirty yellow colour. This pot shirt had, in my judgment, once been part of an ordinary amphora of medium size. For the rest, it measured ten and a half inches in length by seven in width, was about quarter of an inch thick, and densely covered on the convex side that lay towards the bottom of the box, with writing in the later unsealed Greek character, faded here and there, but for the most part perfectly legible, the inscription having evidently been executed with the greatest care, and by means of a reed pen such as the ancients often used. I must not forget to mention that in some remote age this wonderful fragment had been broken in two, and rejoined by means of cement and eight long rivets. Also there were numerous inscriptions on the inner side, but these were of the most erratic character, and had clearly been made by different hands and in many different ages, and of them, together with the writings on the parchment, I shall have to speak presently. Here follows plate one, which is a facsimile of the shirt of Amenatas. It is one one half size, the greatest length of the original is ten and one half inches, the greatest breadth is seven inches, and the weight is one pound five and a half ounces. Plate two also shows a facsimile of the shirt of Amenatas at one one half size. Is there anything more? asked Leo in a kind of excited whisper. I groped about, and produced something hard done up in a little linen bag. Out of the bag we took first a very beautiful miniature done upon ivory, and secondly a small chocolate covered composition scarabaeus marked thus, but the sketch is omitted. Symbols which we have since ascertained mean suttensei ra, which is being translated the royal son of ra or the son. The miniature was a piece of Leo's Greek mother, a lovely dark-eyed creature. On the back of it was written in poor Vinci's handwriting, my beloved wife. That is all, I said. Very well answered Leo, putting down the miniature at which he had been gazing affectionately, and now let us read the letter, and without further ado he broke the seal and read aloud as follows. My son Leo, when you open this, if you ever live to do so, you will have attained to manhood, and I shall have been long enough dead to be absolutely forgotten by nearly all who knew me. Yet in reading it remember that I have been, and for anything you know, may still be, and that in it, through this link of pen and paper, I stretch out my hand to you across the gulf of death, and my voice speaks to you from the silence of the grave. Though I am dead and no memory of me remains in your mind, yet am I with you in this hour that you read. Since your birth, to this day, I have scarcely seen your face. Forgive me this. Your life supplanted the life of one whom I loved better than women are often loved, and the bitterness of it endureth yet. Had I lived, I should in time have conquered this foolish feeling, but I am not destined to live. My sufferings, physical and mental, are more than I can bear, and when such small arrangements as I have to make for your future well-being are completed, it is my intention to put a period to them. May God forgive me if I do wrong, at the best I could not live more than another year. So he killed himself, I exclaimed. I thought so. And now, Leo went on, without replying, enough of myself, what has to be said belongs to you who live, not to me who am dead, and almost as much forgotten as though I had never been. Holly, my friend, to whom, if he will accept the trust it is my intention to confide you, will have told you something of the extraordinary antiquity of your race. In the contents of this casket you will find sufficient to prove it. The strange legend that you will find inscribed by your remote ancestors upon the potshard was communicated to me by my father on his deathbed, and took a strong hold in my imagination. When I was only nineteen years of age, I determined, as to his misfortune did one of our ancestors about the time of Elizabeth to investigate its truth. Into all that befell me I cannot enter now, but this I saw with my own eyes. On the coast of Africa, in a hitherto unexplored region, some distance to the north of where the Zambezi falls into the sea, there is a headland at the extremity of which a peak towers up, shaped like the head of a negro, similar to that of which the writing speaks. I landed there, and learnt from a wandering native who had been cast out by his people because of some crime which he had committed, that far inland are great mountains, shaped like cups, and caves surrounded by measureless swamps. I also learnt that the people there speak a dialect of Arabic, and are ruled over by a beautiful white woman, who is seldom seen by them, but who is reported to have power over all things living and dead. Two days after I had ascertained this, the man died of fever contracted in crossing the swamps, and I was forced by want of provisions and by symptoms of an illness which afterwards prostrated me to take to my dow again. Of the adventures that befell me after this I need not now speak. I was wrecked upon the coast of Madagascar, and rescued some months afterwards by an English ship that brought me to Aden, whence I started for England, intending to prosecute my search as soon as I had made sufficient preparations. On my way I stopped in Greece, and there, for Omnia Vinkit Amor, I met your beloved mother, and married her, and there you were born, and she died. Then it was that my last illness seized me, and I returned hither to die. But still I hoped against hope, and set myself to work to learn Arabic, with the intention, should I ever get better, of returning to the coast of Africa, and solving the mystery of which the tradition has lived so many centuries in our family. But I have not got better, and so far as I am concerned, the story is at an end. For you, however, my son, it is not at an end, and to you I hand on these results of my labour, together with the hereditary proofs of its origin. It is my intention to provide that they shall not be put into your hands until you have reached an age when you will be able to judge for yourself whether or no you will choose to investigate what, if it is true, must be the greatest mystery in the world, or to put it by as an idle fable, originating in the first place in a woman's disordered brain. I do not believe that it is a fable. I believe that if it can only be rediscovered, there is a spot where the vital forces of the world visibly exist. Life exists. Why, therefore, should not the means of preserving it indefinitely exist also? But I have no wish to prejudice your mind about the matter. Read and judge for yourself. If you are inclined to undertake the search, I have so provided that you will not lack for means. If, on the other hand, you are satisfied that the whole thing is a chimera, then I adjure you destroy the pot-shirt and the writings, and let a cause of troubling be removed from our race for ever. Perhaps that will be wisest. The unknown is generally taken to be terrible, not as the proverb would infer, from the inherent superstition of man, but because it so often is terrible. He who would tamper with the vast and secret forces that animate the world, may well fall a victim to them. And if the end were attained, if at last you emerged from the trial ever-beautiful and ever-young, defying time and evil, and lifted above the natural decay of flesh and intellect, who shall say that the awesome change would prove a happy one? Choose, my son, and may the power who rules all things, and who says, thus far shalt thou go, and thus much shalt thou learn, direct the choice to your own happiness and the happiness of the world, which, in the event of your success, you would one day certainly rule by the pure force of accumulated experience. Farewell! Thus the letter, which was unsigned and undated, abruptly ended. What do you make of that, Uncle Holly? said Leo, with a sort of gasp, as he replaced it on the table. We have been looking for a mystery, and we certainly seem to have found one. What do I make of it? Why, that your poor dear father was off his head, of course, I answered testily. I guessed as much that night, twenty years ago, when he came into my room. You see, he evidently hurried his own end, poor man. It is absolute balder-dash. That's it, sir, said Job solemnly. Job was a most matter-of-fact specimen of a matter-of-fact class. Well, let's see what the pot-shirt has to say at any rate, said Leo, taking up the translation in his father's writing, and commencing to read, I fled with thy father from Egypt in the days of Nectarnabes, causing him through love to break the vows that he had vowed. Nectneb, or Nectenabo II, the last native pharaoh of Egypt, fled from Ocus to Ethiopia, BC 339, editor. End of footnote. We fled southward across the waters, and we wandered for twice twelve moons on the coast of Libya, Africa, that looks towards the rising sun, where by a river is a great rock carving like the head of an Ethiopian. Four days on the water from the mouth of a mighty river were we cast away, and some were drowned, and some died of sickness. But us, wild men, took through the wastes and marshes, where the seafowl hid the sky, bearing us ten days' journey till we came to a hollow mountain, where a great city had been and fallen, and where there are caves of which no man hath seen the end, and they brought us to the queen of the people who place pots upon the heads of strangers, who is a magician having a knowledge of all things, and life and loveliness that does not die. And she cast eyes of love upon thy father, calicoities, and would have slain me, and taken him to husband, but he loved me, and feared her, and would not. Then did she take us, and lead us by terrible ways, by means of dark magic, to where the great pit is, in the mouth of which the old philosopher lay dead, and showed to us the rolling pillar of life that dies not, whereof the voice is as the voice of thunder. And she did stand in the flames, and come forth unharmed, and yet more beautiful. Then did she swear to make thy father undying even as she is, if he would but slain me, and give himself to her, for me she could not slay because of the magic of my own people that I have, and that prevailed thus far against her. And he held up his hand before his eyes to hide her beauty, and would not. Then in her rage did she smite him by her magic, and he died, but she wept over him, and bore him thence with lamentations, and being afraid, me she sent to the mouth of the great river where the ships come. And I was carried far away on the ships where I gave thee birth, and hither to Athens I came at last after many wanderings. Now I say to thee, my son, to cis the knees, seek out the woman, and learn the secret of life, and if thou mayest find a way, slay her, because of thy father caliquities. And if thou dost fear or fail, this I say, to all thy seed who come after thee, till at last a brave man be found among them who shall bathe in the fire and sit in the place of the pharaohs. I speak of those things, that though they be past belief, yet I have known, and I lie not. May the Lord forgive her for that, groaned Job, who had been listening to this marvelous composition with his mouth open. As for myself, I said nothing. My first idea, being that my poor friend, being demented, had composed the whole thing, though it scarcely seemed likely that such a story could have been invented by anybody. It was too original. To solve my doubts, I took up the pot-shirt, and began to read the close, unsealed Greek writing on it, and very good Greek of the period it is, considering that it came from the pen of an Egyptian born. Here is an exact transcript of it. The transcript is a solid block of Greek uppercase characters, with neither spaces nor punctuation between the letters. For general convenience in reading, I have here accurately transcribed this transcription into the cursive character. The transcript is a passage of Greek text. The English translation was, as I discovered on further investigation, and as the reader may easily see by comparison, both accurate and elegant. Besides the unsealed writing, on the convex side of the shirt, at the top, painted in dull red, on what had once been the lip of the amphora, was the cartouche already mentioned as being on the scarabaeus, which we had also found in the casket. The hieroglyphics, or symbols, however, were reversed, just as though they had been pressed on wax. Whether this was the cartouche of the original colliquities, or of some prince or pharaoh from whom his wife Amenartas was descended, I am not sure. Nor can I tell if it was drawn upon the shirt at the same time that the unsealed Greek was inscribed, or copied on more recently from the scarab by some other member of the family. Footnote. The cartouche, if it be a true cartouche, cannot have been that of colliquities, as Mr. Holly suggests. Colliquities was a priest and not entitled to a cartouche, which was the prerogative of Egyptian royalty, though he might have inscribed his name or title upon an oval. Editor. End of footnote. Nor was this all. At the foot of the writing, painted in the same dull red, was the faint outline of a somewhat rude drawing of the head and shoulders of a sphinx wearing two feathers, symbols of majesty, which though common enough upon the effigies of sacred bulls and gods I have never before met with on a sphinx. Also on the right side of this surface of the shirt, painted obliquely in red on the space not covered by the unsealed characters, and signed in blue paint, was the following quaint inscription. In earth and sky and sea, strange things there be, hock fake it Dorothea Vinci. Perfectly bewildered, I turned the relic over. It was covered from top to bottom with notes and signatures in Greek, Latin and English. The first, in unsealed Greek, was by Tysisthanes, the son to whom the writing was addressed. It was, I could not go, Tysisthanes to his son Calicrates. Here it is, in facsimile, with its cursive equivalent. The cursive equivalent reads, This Calicrates, probably in the Greek fashion so named after his grandfather, evidently made some attempt to start on the quest, for his entry, written in very faint and almost illegible unseal, is, I ceased from my going the gods being against me. Calicrates to his son. Here it is also, Tone Theon, Antistanton, Eposamen, Teas Piraeus, Calicrates to Paidi. Between these two ancient writings, the second of which was inscribed upside down, and was so faint and worn, that had it not been for the transcript of it executed by Vinci, I should scarcely have been able to read it, since, owing to its having been written on that portion of the tile which had, in the course of ages, undergone the most handling, it was nearly rubbed out. Was the bold, modern-looking signature of one Lionel Vinci, Eittarte Sua 17, which was written thereon, I think, by Leo's grandfather. To the right of this were the initials J B V, and below came a variety of Greek signatures, in unseal and cursive character, and what appeared to be some carelessly executed repetitions of the sentence Topeidi to my son, showing that the relic was religiously passed on from generation to generation. The next legible thing after the Greek signatures was the word Romai A U C, showing that the family had now migrated to Rome. Unfortunately, however, with the exception of its termination, Avi, the date of their settlement there is for ever lost, for just where it had been placed a piece of the potchard is broken away. Then followed twelve Latin signatures jotted about here and there, wherever there was a space upon the tile suitable to their inscription. These signatures, with three exceptions only, ended with the name Windex, or the Avenger, which seems to have been adopted by the family after its migration to Rome, as a kind of equivalent to the Greek Tysistanese, which also means an Avenger. Ultimately, as might be expected, this Latin cognomen of Windex was transformed first into Da Vinci, and then into the plain modern Vinci. It is very curious to observe how the idea of revenge, inspired by an Egyptian who lived before the time of Christ, is thus, as it were, embalmed in an English family name. A few of the Roman names inscribed upon the sherd I have actually since found mentioned in history and other records. They were, if I remember right, Musius Windex, Sextus Varius Marullus, C. Fulfidius C. F. Windex, and La Beria Pompeiana, Cognunx Macrini Windicus. This last, of course, being the name of a Roman lady. The following list, however, comprises all the Latin names upon the sherd. C. Caechilius Windex, M. Amilius Windex, Sextus Varius Marullus, Q. Sosius Priscus Senechio Windex, L. Valerius Cominius Windex, Sextus Otachilius Mf, L. Atius Windex, Musius Windex, C. Fulfidius C. F. Windex, Lycinius Faustus, La Beria Pompeiana, Cognunx Macrini Windicus, Manilia Lucila, Cognunx Marulli Windicus. After the Roman names, there is evidently a gap of very many centuries. Nobody will ever know what was the history of the relic during those dark ages, or how it came to have been preserved in the family. My poor friend Vincey had, it will be remembered, told me that his Roman ancestors finally settled in Lombardy, and when Charlemagne invaded it, returned with him across the Alps, and made their home in Brittany, whence they crossed England in the reign of Edward the Confessor. How he knew this I am not aware, for there is no reference to Lombardy or Charlemagne upon the tile, though as will presently be seen there is a reference to Brittany. To continue, the next entries upon the sherd, if I may accept a long splash either of blood or red colouring matter of some sort, consist of two crosses drawn in red pigment, and probably representing Crusader's swords, and a rather neat monogram, DV, in scarlet and blue, perhaps executed by that same Dorothy of Vincey who wrote, or rather painted, the dog or couplet. To the left of this, inscribed in faint blue were the initials A, V, and after them a date, 1800. Then came what was perhaps as curious an entry as anything upon this extraordinary relic of the past. It is executed in black letter written over the crosses or crusader's swords, and dated 1445. As the best plan will be to allow it to speak for itself, I here give the black letter facsimile, together with the original Latin without the contractions, from which it will be seen that the writer was a fair medieval Latinist. Also we have discovered what is still more curious, an English version of the black letter Latin. This, also written in black letter, we found inscribed on a second parchment that was in the coffer, apparently somewhat older in date than that on which was inscribed the medieval Latin translation of the Anciel Greek of which I shall speak presently. This I also give in full. Here appears a facsimile of the black letter inscription on the Shred of Aminatas. Here also appears an expanded version of the above black letter inscription. Here appears a facsimile of the old English black letter translation of the above Latin inscription from the Shred of Aminatas found inscribed upon a parchment. Here appears a modernized version of the above black letter translation. The next, and save one, last entry was Elizabethan and dated 1564. A most strange history and one that did cost my father his life, for in seeking for the place upon the east coast of Africa his pinnance was sunk by a Portuguese galleon of Lorenzo Marquez, and he himself perished. John, Vinci. Then came the last entry, apparently to judge by the style of writing, made by some representative of the family in the middle of the eighteenth century. It was a misquotation of the well-known lines in Hamlet and ran thus. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio. Footnote. Another thing that makes me fix the date of this entry at the middle of the eighteenth century is that, curiously enough, I have an acting copy of Hamlet, written about 1740, in which these two lines are misquoted almost exactly in the same way. And I have little doubt, but that the Vinci who wrote them on the pot-shirt heard them so misquoted at that date. Of course the lines really run. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. L-H-H. End footnote. And now there remained but one more document to be examined, namely the ancient black-letter transcription into medieval Latin of the Ancil inscription on the shirt. As will be seen this translation was executed and subscribed in the year 1495 by a certain learned man Edmundus de Prato, Edmund Pratt by name, licentiate in canon law of Exeter College Oxford, Oxford, who had actually been a pupil of Grokine, the first scholar who taught Greek in England. Footnote. Grokine, the instructor of Erasmus, studied Greek under Chalcon Dylas, the Byzantine and Florence, and first lectured in the Hall of Exeter College Oxford in 1491. Editor. End footnote. No doubt on the fame of this new learning reaching his ears, the Vinci of the day, perhaps that same John de Vinci who years before had saved the relic from destruction and made the black-letter entry on the shirt in 1445, hurried off to Oxford to see if by chance it might avail to dissolve the secret of the mysterious inscription. Nor was he disappointed, for the learned Erasmus was equal to the task. Indeed, his rendering is so excellent an example of medieval learning and Latinity that, even at the risk of sating the learned reader with too many antiquities, I have made up my mind to give it in facsimile, together with an expanded version for the benefit of those who find the contractions troublesome. The translation has several peculiarities, on which this is not the place to dwell, but I would in passing call the attention of scholars to the passage duxerunt altem nos ad reginum ad venus lassinas coronantium, which strikes me as a delightful rendering of the original, ergagon deus bazileus tenton exenus cutres stefanunton. Here appears a medieval black-letter Latin translation of the unsealed inscription on the shirt of Amenatas. Here appears an expanded version of the above medieval Latin translation. Well, I said, when at length I had read out and carefully examined these writings and paragraphs, at least those of them that were still easily legible. That is the conclusion of the whole matter, Leo, and now you can form your own opinion on it. I have already formed mine. And what is it, he asked in his quick way. It is this. I believe that potchard to be perfectly genuine, and that, wonderful as it may seem, it has come down in your family from since the fourth century before Christ. The entries absolutely prove it, and therefore, however improbable it may seem, it must be accepted. But there I stop. That your remote ancestors, the Egyptian princess, or some scribe under her direction, wrote that which we see on the shirt, I have no doubt, nor have I the slightest doubt but that her sufferings and the loss of her husband had turned her head, and that she was not right in her mind when she did write it. How do you account for what my father saw and heard there? asked Leo. Coincidence. No doubt there are bluffs on the coast of Africa that look something like a man's head, and plenty of people who speak bastard Arabic. Also, I believe that there are lots of swamps. Another thing is, Leo, and I am sorry to say it, but I do not believe that your poor father was quite right when he wrote that letter. He had met with a great trouble, and also he had allowed this story to prey on his imagination, and he was a very imaginative man. Anyway, I believe that the whole thing is the most unmitigated rubbish. I know that there are curious things and forces in nature which we rarely meet with, and when we do meet them, cannot understand. But until I see it with my own eyes, which I am not likely to, I never will believe that there is any means of avoiding death, even for a time, or that there is, or was, a white sorceress living in the heart of an African swamp. It is Bosch, my boy, all Bosch. What do you say, Job? I say, sir, that it is a lie, and if it is true, I hope Mr. Leo won't meddle with no such things, for no good can't come of it. Perhaps you are both right, said Leo, very quietly. I express no opinion, but I say this. I am going to set the matter at rest once and for all, and if you won't come with me, I will go by myself. I looked at the young man, and saw that he meant what he said. When Leo means what he says, he always puts on a curious look about the mouth. It has been a trick of his from a child. Now, as a matter of fact, I had no intention of allowing Leo to go anywhere by himself, for my own sake if not for his. I was far too attached to him for that. I am not a man of many ties or affections. Circumstances have been against me in this respect, and men and women shrink from me, or at least I fancy that they do, which comes to the same thing, thinking perhaps that my somewhat forbidding exterior is a key to my character. Rather than endure this, I have, to a great extent, secluded myself from the world, and cut myself off from those opportunities which with most men result in the formation of relations more or less intimate. Therefore Leo was all the world to me, brother, child and friend, and until he worried of me, where he went, there I should go too. But of course it would not do to let him see how great a hold he had over me, so I cast about for some means whereby I might let myself down easy. Yes, I shall go, uncle, and if I don't find the rolling pillar of life, at any rate I shall get some first-class shooting. Here was my opportunity, and I took it. Shooting, I said? Ah, yes, I never thought of that. It must be a very wild stretch of country, and full of big game. I have always wanted to kill a buffalo before I die. Do you know, my boy, I don't believe in the quest, but I do believe in big game, and really, on the whole, if after thinking it over you make up your mind to go, I will take a holiday and come with you. Ah, said Leo, I thought you would not lose such a chance, but how about money? We shall want a good lot. You need not trouble about that, I answered. There is all your income that has been accumulating for years, and besides that I have saved two-thirds of what your father left to me, as I consider in trust for you. There is plenty of cash. Very well, then. We may as well stow these things away, and go up to town to see about our guns. By the way, Job, are you coming too? It's time you began to see the world. Well, sir, answered Job stolidly, I don't hold much with foreign parts, but if both you gentlemen are going you will want somebody to look after you, and I am not the man to stop behind after serving you for twenty years. That's right, Job, said I. You won't find out anything wonderful, but you will get some good shooting. And now look here, both of you. I won't have a word said to a living soul about this nonsense, and I pointed to the pot-shirt. If it got out, and anything happened to me, my next of kin would dispute my will on the ground of insanity, and I should become the laughing stock of Cambridge. That day three months we were on the ocean, bound for Zanzibar. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of She This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by I. C. Jumbo She by H. Rider Haggard Chapter 4 The Squall How different is the scene that I now have to tell from that which has just been told? Gone are the quiet college rooms, gone the windswayed English elms, the co-ing rooks, and the familiar volumes on the shelves, and in their place there rises a vision of the great calm ocean gleaming in shaded silver lights beneath the beams of the full African moon. A gentle breeze fills the huge sail of Ardao, and draws us through the water that ripples musically against her sides. Most of the men are sleeping forward, for it is near midnight, but a stout, swore the Arab, Mohammed by name, stands at the tiller, lazily steering by the stars. Three miles or more to our starboard is a low, dim line. It is the eastern shore of Central Africa. We are running to the southward, before the northeast monsoon, between the mainland and the reef that for hundreds of miles fringes this perilous coast. The night is quiet, so quiet that a whisper can be heard for and after the dow, so quiet that a faint booming sound rolls across the water to us from the distant land. The Arab at the tiller holds up his hand and says one word, Simba, lion. We all sit up and listen. Then it comes again, a slow, majestic sound that thrills us to the marrow. Tomorrow by ten o'clock, I say, we ought, if the captain is not out in his reckoning, which I think very probable, to make this mysterious rock with a man's head and begin our shooting. And begin our search for the ruined city and the fire of life, corrected Leo, taking his pipe from his mouth and laughing a little. Nonsense, I answered. You were airing your Arabic with that man at the tiller this afternoon. What did he tell you? He has been trading, slave trading probably, up and down these latitudes for half his iniquitous life, and once landed on this very man-rock. Did he ever hear anything of the ruined city or the caves? No, answered Leo. He says that the country is all swamp behind, and full of snakes, especially pythons and game, and that no man lives there. But then there is a belt of swamp all along the East African coast, so that does not go for much. Yes, I said, it does, it goes for malaria. You see what sort of an opinion these gentry have of the country? Not one of them will go with us. They think that we are mad, and upon my word, I believe that they are right. If we ever see Old England again, I shall be astonished. However, it does not greatly matter to me at my age, but I am anxious for you, Leo, and for Job. It's a Tom Fools business, my boy. All right, Uncle Horace. So far as I am concerned, I am willing to take my chance. Look! What is that cloud? And he pointed to a dark blotch upon the starry sky, some miles astern of us. Go and ask the man at the tiller, I said. He rose, stretched his arms, and went. Presently he returned. He says it is a squall, but it will pass far on one side of us. Just then Job came up, looking very stout and English in his shooting-suit of brown flannel, and with the sort of perplexed appearance upon his honest round face that had been very common with him since he got into these strange waters. Please, sir, he said, touching his sun-hat, which was stuck on the back of his head in a somewhat ludicrous fashion. As we have got all these guns and things in the whale-boater stern, to say nothing of the provisions in the lockers, I think it would be best if I got down and slept in her. I don't like the looks—here he dropped his voice to a portentous whisper—of these black gentry. They have such a wonderful, thievish way about them, supposing now that some of them were to slip into the boat at night and cut the cable and make off with her. That would be a pretty go that would. The whale-boat, I may explain, was one specially built for us at Dundee in Scotland. We had brought it with us, as we knew that this coast was a network of creeks, and that we might require something to navigate them with. She was a beautiful boat, thirty feet in length, with a centreboard for sailing, copper-bottomed to keep the worm out of her, and full of watertight compartments. The captain of the dowel had told us that when we reached the rock, which he knew, and which appeared to be identical with the one described upon the sherd, and by Leo's father, he would probably not be able to run up to it on account of the shallows and breakers. Therefore we had employed three hours that very morning whilst we were totally becalmed, the wind having dropped at sunrise, in transferring most of our goods and chattels to the whale-boat, and placing the guns, ammunition, and preserved provisions in the watertight lockers specially prepared for them, so that when we did sight the fabled rock we should have nothing to do but step into the boat and run her ashore. Another reason that had induced us to take this precautionary step was that our captains are apt to run past the point that they are making, either from carelessness, or owing to a mistake in its identity. Now, as sailors know, it is quite impossible for a dowel, which is only rigged to run before the monsoon, to beat back against it. Therefore we got our boat ready to row for the rock at any moment. Well, Job, I said, perhaps it would be as well. There are lots of blankets there. Only be careful to keep out of the moon, or it may turn your head, or blind you. Lord, sir, I don't think it would much matter if it did. It is that turned already with the sight of these black-a-mores and their filthy thieving ways. They are only fit for muck, they are, and they smell bad enough for it already. Job, it will be perceived, was no admirer of the manners and customs of our dark-skinned brothers. Accordingly we hauled up the boat by the tow-rope till it was right under the stern of the dowel, and Job bundled into her with all the grace of a falling sack of potatoes. Then we returned and sat down on the deck again, and smoked and talked in little gusts and jerks. The night was so lovely, and our brains were so full of suppressed excitement of one sort and another, that we did not feel inclined to turn in. For nearly an hour we sat thus, and then, I think, we both dozed off. At least I have a faint recollection of Leo's sleepily explaining that the head was not a bad place to hit a buffalo, if you could catch him exactly between the horns, or send your bullet down his throat, or some nonsense of the sort. Then I remember no more, till suddenly a frightful roar of wind, a shriek of terror from the awakening crew, and a whip-like sting of water in our faces. Some of the men ran to let go the hall-yards and lower the sail, but the peril jammed, and the yard would not come down. I sprang to my feet and hung on to a rope. The sky aft was dark as pitch, but the moon still shone brightly ahead of us and lit up the blackness. Beneath its sheen a huge white-topped breaker, twenty feet high or more, was rushing on to us. It was on the break, the moon shone on its crest and tipped its foam with light. On it rushed, beneath the inky sky, driven by the awful squall behind it. Suddenly, in a twinkling of an eye, I saw the black shape of the whale-boat cast high into the air on the crest of the breaking wave. Then, a shock of water, a wild rush of boiling foam, and I was clinging for my life to the shroud, I swept straight out from it like a flag in a gale. We were pooped. The wave passed. It seemed to me that I was under water for minutes. Really, it was seconds. I looked forward. The blast had torn out the great sail, and high in the air it was fluttering away to leeward like a huge wounded bird. Then for a moment there was comparative calm, and in it I heard Job's voice yelling wildly, Come here to the boat! Bewildered and half-drowned as I was, I had the sense to rush aft. I felt the dow sinking under me. She was full of water. Under her counter the whale-boat was tossing furiously, and I saw the Arab Mohammed, who had been steering, leap into her. I gave one desperate pull at the tow-rope to bring the boat alongside. Wildly I sprang also. Job caught me by the arm, and I rolled into the bottom of the boat. Down went the dow bodily, and as she did so Mohammed drew his curved knife, and severed the fibre-rope by which we were fast to her, and in another second we were driving before the storm over the place where the dow had been. Great God, I shrieked! Where is Leo? Leo! Leo! He's gone, sir! God help him! wrought Job into my ear, and such was the fury of the squall that his voice sounded like a whisper. I wrung my hands in agony. Leo was drowned, and I was left alive to mourn him. Look out, yelled Job! Here comes another! I turned. A second huge wave was overtaking us. I half hoped that it would drown me. With a curious fascination I watched its awful advent. The moon was nearly hidden now by the wreaths of the rushing storm, but a little light still caught the crest of the devouring breaker. There was something dark on it, a piece of wreckage. It was honest now, and the boat was nearly full of water. But she was built in airtight compartments, heaven bless the man who invented them, and lifted up through it like a swan. Through the foam and turmoil I saw the black thing on the wave hurrying right at me. I put out my right arm to ward it from me, and my hand closed on another arm, the wrist of which my fingers gripped like a vice. I am a very strong man, and had something to hold on to, but my arm was nearly torn from its socket by the strain and weight of the floating body. Had the rush lasted another two seconds I might either have let go, or gone with it. But it passed, leaving us up to our knees in water. Bail out! Bail out! shouted Job, suiting the action to the word. But I could not bail just then, for as the moon went out, and left us in total darkness, one faint flying ray of light lit upon the face of the man I had gripped, who was now half-lying, half-floating in the bottom of the boat. It was Leo. Leo brought back by the wave, back, dead or alive, from the very jaws of death. Bail out! Bail out! yelled Job, all we shall founder! I seized a large tin bowl with a handle to it, which was fixed under one of the seats. And the three of us bailed away for dear life. The furious tempest drove over and round us, flinging the boat this way and that. The wind and the storm wreaths, and the sheets of stinging spray, blinded and bewildered us. But through it all we worked like demons with the wild exhilaration of despair, for even despair can exhilarate. One minute. Three minutes. Six minutes. The boat began to lighten, and no fresh wave swamped us. Five minutes more, and she was fairly clear. Then, suddenly, after the awful shriekings of the hurricane, came a duller, deeper roar. Great heavens! It was the voice of breakers! At that moment the moon began to shine forth again, this time behind the path of the school. Out far across the torn bosom of the ocean shot the ragged arrows of her light, and there, half a mile ahead of us, was a white line of foam, then a little space of open-mouthed blackness, and then another line of white. It was the breakers, and their roar grew clearer, and yet more clear as we sped down upon them like a swallow. There they were, boiling up in snowy spouts of spray, smiting and gnashing together like the gleaming teeth of hell. Take the tiller, Mohammed, I roared in Arabic, we must try and shoot them. At the same moment I seized an ore, and got it out, motioning Job to do likewise. Mohammed clambered aft, and got hold of the tiller, and with some difficulty Job, who had sometimes pulled a tub upon the homely cam, got out his ore. In another minute the boat's head was straight on to the ever-nearing foam, towards which she plunged and tore with the speed of a race-horse. Just in front of us the first line of breakers seemed a little thinner to the right or left. There was a cap of rather deeper water. I turned and pointed to it. Steer for your life, Mohammed! I yelled. He was a skillful steersman, and well acquainted with the dangers of this most perilous coast. And I saw him grip the tiller, bend his heavy frame forward, and stare at the foaming terror till his big round eyes looked as though they would start out of his head. The scent of the sea was driving the boat's head round to starboard. If we struck the line of breakers fifty yards to starboard of the gap, we must sink. It was a great field of twisting, spouting waves. Mohammed planted his foot against the seat before him, and glancing at him, I saw his brown toes spread out like a hand with the weight he put upon them as he took the strain of the tiller. She came round a bit, but not enough. I roared to Job, to backwater, whilst I dragged and laboured at my oar. She answered now, and none too soon. Heavens! We were in them, and then followed a couple of minutes of heart-breaking excitement such as I cannot hope to describe. All that I remember is a shrieking sea of foam out of which the billows rose here, there, and everywhere like avenging ghosts from their ocean grave. Once we were turned right round, but either by chance or through Mohammed's skillful steering, the boat's head came straight again before a break of fildes. One more, a monster! We were through it or over it, more through than over, and then, with a wild yell of exaltation from the Arab, we shot out into the comparative smooth water of the mouth of sea between the teeth-like lines of gnashing waves. But we were nearly full of water again, and not more than half a mile ahead was the second line of breakers. Again we set to and bailed furiously. Fortunately the storm had now quite gone by, and the moon shone brightly, revealing a rocky headland running half a mile or more out into the sea, of which this second line of breakers appeared to be a continuation. At any rate they boiled round its foot. Probably the ridge that formed the headland ran out into the ocean, only at a lower level, and made the reef also. This headland was terminated by a curious peak that seemed not to be more than a mile away from us. Just as we got the boat pretty clear for the second time, Leo, to my immense relief, opened his eyes and remarked that the clothes had tumbled off the bed, and that he supposed it was time to get up for chapel. I told him to shut his eyes and keep quiet, which he did without in the slightest degree realising the position. As for myself, his reference to chapel made me reflect with the sort of sick longing on my comfortable rooms at Cambridge. Why had I been such a fool as to leave them? This is a reflection that has several times recurred to me since, and with an ever increasing force. But now again we were drifting down on the breakers, though with lessened speed, for the wind had fallen, and only the current or the tide, it afterwards turned out to be the tide, was driving us. Another minute, and with a sort of howl to Allah from the Arab, a pious ejaculation from myself, and something that was not pious from Job, we were in them, and then the whole scene, down to our final escape, repeated itself, only not quite so violently. Mohammed's skillful steering and the airtight compartments saved our lives. In five minutes we were through, and drifting, for we were too exhausted to do anything to help ourselves except keep our head straight, with the most startling rapidity round the headland which I have described. Round we went with the tide, until we got well under the lee of the point, and then suddenly the speed slackened, we ceased to make way, and finally appeared to be in dead water. The storm had entirely passed, leaving a clean washed sky behind it. The headland intercepted the heavy sea that had been occasioned by the squall, and the tide, which had been running so fiercely up the river, for we were now in the mouth of a river, was sluggish before it turned, so we floated quietly, and before the moon went down managed to bail out the boat thoroughly and get her a little ship shape. Leo was sleeping profoundly, and on the whole I thought it wise not to wake him. It was true he was sleeping in wet clothes, but the night was now so warm that I thought, and so did Job, that they were not likely to injure a man of his unusually vigorous constitution. Besides, we had no dry ones at hand. Presently the moon went down, and left us floating on the waters, now only heaving like some troubled woman's breast, with leisure to reflect upon all that we had gone through, and all that we had escaped. Job stationed himself at the bow, Mohammed kept his post at the tiller, and I sat on a seat in the middle of the boat, close to where Leo was lying. The moon went slowly down in chastened loveliness. She departed like some sweet bride into her chamber, and long veil-like shadows crept up the sky through which the stars peeped shyly out. Soon, however, they too began to pale before a splendour in the east, and then the quivering footsteps of the dawn came rushing across the newborn blue, and shook the high stars from their places. quieter and yet more quiet grew the sea, quiet as the soft mist that brooded on her bosom, and covered up her troubling, as the elusive wreaths of sleep brewed upon a pain-wracked mind, causing it to forget its sorrow. From the east to the west sped the angels of the dawn, from sea to sea, from mountaintop to mountaintop, scattering light with both their hands. On they spared, out of the darkness, perfect, glorious, like spirits of the just breaking from the tomb. On, over the quiet sea, over the low coastline, and the swamps beyond, and the mountains above them. Over those who slept in peace, and those who woke in sorrow, over the evil and the good, over the living and the dead, over the wide world, and all that breathes, or has breathed thereon. It was a wonderfully beautiful sight, and yet sad perhaps, from the very excess of its beauty. The arising sun, the setting sun. There we have the symbol and the type of humanity, and all things with which humanity has to do. The symbol and the type, yes, and the earthly beginning and the end also. And on that morning this came home to me with a peculiar force. The sun that rose to day for us had set last night for eighteen of our fellow voyagers, had set everlastingly for eighteen whom we knew. The dowl had gone down with them. They were tossing about among the rocks and seaweed, so much human drift on the great ocean of death. And we four were saved. But one day a sunrise will come when we shall be among those who are lost, and then others will watch those glorious rays and grow sad in the midst of the beauty, and dream of death in the full glow of a rising life. For this is the lot of man. End of chapter four