Allan and the Ice Gods

Title: Allan and the Ice-gods

Author: H. Rider Haggard

A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

eBook No.: 0200201.txt

Language: English

Date first posted: March 2002

Date most recently updated: March 2002

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ALLAN and THE ICE-GODS

A Tale of Beginnings

BY H. RIDER HAGGARD

A fire mist and a planet,—

A crystal and a cell,—

A jellyfish and a saurian

And caves where the cave men dwell;

Then a sense of law and beauty,

And a face turned from the clod,—

Some call it Evolution

And others call it God.

From “Each In His Own Tongue,”

by William Herbert Carruth

Had I the slightest qualification for the task, I, Allan Quatermain,

would like to write an essay on Temptation.

This, of course, comes to all, in one shape or another, or at any rate

to most, for there are some people so colourless, so invertebrate that

they cannot be tempted—or perhaps the subtle powers which surround

and direct, or misdirect, us do not think them worth an effort. These

cling to any conditions, moral or material, in which they may find

themselves, like limpets to a rock; or perhaps float along the stream

of circumstance like jellyfish, making no effort to find a path for

themselves in either case, and therefore die as they have lived—quite

good because nothing has ever moved them to be otherwise—the objects

of the approbation of the world, and, let us hope, of Heaven also.

The majority are not so fortunate; something is always egging their

living personalities along this or that road of mischief. Materialists

will explain to us that this something is but the passions inherited

from a thousand generations of unknown progenitors who, departing,

left the curse of their blood behind them. I, who am but a simple old

fellow, take another view, which, at any rate, is hallowed by many

centuries of human opinion. Yes, in this matter, as in sundry others,

I put aside all the modern talk and theories and am plumb for the

good, old-fashioned, and most efficient Devil as the author of our

woes. No one else could suit the lure so exactly to the appetite as

that old fisherman in the waters of the human soul, who knows so well

how to bait his hooks and change his flies so that they may be

attractive not only to all fish but to every mood of each of them.

Well, without going further with the argument, rightly or wrongly,

that is my opinion.

Thus, to take a very minor matter—for if the reader thinks that these

words are the prelude to telling a tale of murder or other great sins

he is mistaken—I believe that it was Satan himself, or, at any rate,

one of his agents, who caused my late friend, Lady Ragnall, to

bequeath to me the casket of the magical herb called
Taduki
, in

connection with which already we had shared certain remarkable

adventures.[*]

[*] See the books
The Ivory Child
and
The Ancient Allan
.

Now, it may be argued that to make use of this
Taduki
and on its

wings to be transported, in fact or in imagination, to some far-away

state in which one appears for a while to live and move and have one’s

being is no crime, however rash the proceeding. Nor is it, since, if

we can find new roads to knowledge, or even to interesting imaginings,

why should we not take them? But to break one’s word
is
a crime, and

because of the temptation of this stuff, which, I confess, for me has

more allurement than anything else on earth, at any rate, in these

latter days, I have broken my word.

For, after a certain experience at Ragnall Castle, did I not swear to

myself and before Heaven that no power in the world, not even that of

Lady Ragnall herself, would induce me again to inhale those time-dissolving fumes and look upon that which, perhaps designedly, is

hidden from the eyes of man; namely, revealments of his buried past,

or mayhap of his yet unacted future? What do I say? This business is

one of dreams—no more; though I think that those dreams are best left

unexplored, because they suggest too much and yet leave the soul

unsatisfied. Better the ignorance in which we are doomed to wander

than these liftings of corners of the veil; than these revelations

which excite delirious hopes that, after all, may be but marsh lights

which, when they vanish, will leave us in completer blackness.

Now I will get on to the story of my fall; of how it came about and

the revelations to which it led, and which I found interesting enough,

whatever others may think of them.

Elsewhere I have told how, years after our joint adventure into

Central Africa, once again I came into touch with the widowed Lady

Ragnall and allowed myself to be persuaded in her company to inhale

the charmed smoke of the
Taduki
herb, with which she became familiar

when, in a state of mental collapse, she fell into the hands of the

priests of some strange African faith. Under its influence, the

curtain of time seemed to swing aside, and she and I saw ourselves

playing great parts as inhabitants of Egypt in the days of the Persian

domination. In that life, if the tale were true, we had been very

intimate, but before this intimacy culminated in actual union, the

curtain fell and we reawoke to our modern world.

Next morning, I went away, much confused and very frightened, nor did

I ever again set eyes upon the stately and beautiful Lady Ragnall.

After all that we had learned or dreamed, I felt that further meetings

would be awkward. Also, to tell the truth, I did not like the story of

the curse which was said to hang over the man who had to do with her

who, in it, was named Amada and filled the role of priestess of Isis,

the goddess whom she betrayed, in whatever generation might be born,

or perchance reborn. Of course, such ancient maledictions are the

merest nonsense. And yet—well, the truth is that in our separate

fashions we are all superstitious, and really the fate of Lord

Ragnall, who had married this lady, was most unpleasant and

suggestive; too much so to encourage anyone else to follow his

example. Further, I had come to a time of life when I did not wish for

more adventures in which women were mixed up, even in dreams; since

such, I have observed, however entrancing at the moment, lead to

trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.

Thus it came about that when Lady Ragnall wrote asking me to stay with

her—as she did on two subsequent occasions—I put her off with

excuses which were perfectly valid, although at this moment I forget

what they may have been, it being my firm intention never again to

place myself within reach of her beauteous and commanding personality.

You see, in that dream we dreamed together, the story came to an end

just as I was about to marry the Princess and High Priestess Amada,

who was, or appeared to be, Lady Ragnall’s prototype. Indeed, on

regaining her senses, she, whose vision lasted a second or two longer

than did mine, let it slip that we actually had been married in some

primitive Egyptian fashion, and I could see clearly enough, although I

knew it to be nonsense, she believed that this event had happened.

Now, even when the scene was laid a long while ago, it is extremely

awkward to foregather with an imperial woman who is firmly convinced

that she was once your wife, so awkward that, in the end, it might

have proved necessary to resume what she considered to be an

established, if an interrupted, relationship.

This, for sundry reasons, I was determined not to do, not the least of

them being that certainly I should have been set down as a fortune

hunter; also, as I have said, there was always the curse in the

background, which I hoped fondly would recognize my self-denial and

not operate in my direction. And yet—although to think of it makes me

feel cold down the back—if perchance that dream were true, already it

was incurred. Already I, Allan, the Shabaka of former days, am doomed

“to die by violence far from my own country where first I had looked

upon the sun,” as its terms, recorded in the papyrus from Kandah-land,

of which I read a translation at the Castle, provide, with antique

directness and simplicity, as the lot of all and sundry who have ever

ventured to lay hands or lips upon the person of Amada, High Priestess

of Isis.

To return. In reply to my second letter of excuse, I received a quaint

little epistle from the lady to whom it had been written. It ran thus:

Shabaka, why do you seek to escape the net of Fate when already

you are enveloped in its meshes? You think that never more, seated

side by side, shall we see the blue
Taduki
smoke rise up toward

us, or feel its subtle strength waft our souls afar.

Perhaps this is so, though assuredly even here you are doomed to

acknowledge its dominion, how often I do not know, and will you

find it less to be feared alone than in my company? Moreover, from

that company you never can escape, since it has been with you from

time immemorial, if not continuously, and will be with you when

there is no more sun.

Yet, as it is your wish, until we meet again in the past or in the

future, farewell, O Shabaka.

Amada.

When I had finished reading this very peculiar note, of which the

envelope, by the way, was sealed with the ancient Egyptian ring that

my late friend Lord Ragnall had found and given to his wife just

before his terrible fate overtook him, literally I felt faint and lay

back in my chair to recover myself. Really, she was an ominous and, in

her way, rather creepy woman, one unlike all others, one who seemed to

be in touch with that which, doubtless by intention, is hidden from

mankind. Now it came back to me that, when first I met her as the Hon.

Luna Holmes and was so interested in her at the Ragnall Castle dinner

party before her marriage, I was impressed with this ominous quality

which seemed to flow from her, as, had he been more sensitive, her

future husband would have been also.

During our subsequent association in Africa, too, it had always been

with me, and, of course, it was in full force through our joint

experience with the
Taduki
herb. Now again it flowed up in me like

an unsealed fountain and drowned my judgment, washing the ordered

reason on which I prided myself from its foundations. Also, in this

confusion, another truth emerged, namely, that from the first moment I

set my eyes on her I had always been attracted by and, in a kind of

hidden way, “in love” with her. It was not a violent and passionate

sort of affection, but then the same man can love sundry women in

different ways, all of which are real enough.

Yet I knew that it was permanent. For a little while her phantasies

got a hold upon me, and I began to believe that we always had been and

always should be mixed up together; also that, in some undeclared

fashion, I was under deep obligations to her, that she had stood my

friend, not once but often, and so would stand while our personalities

continued to endure. True, she had been Ragnall’s wife, yet—and this

through no personal vanity, since Heaven knows that this vice is