He

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HE



BY THE AUTHOR OF

'IT'  'KING SOLOMON'S WIVES'  'BESS'
'MUCH DARKER DAYS'  'MR MORTON'S SUBTLER'

AND OTHER ROMANCES



LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1887

All rights reserved

PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON




'SHE.'

_TO H. RIDER HAGGARD._

_Not in the waste beyond the swamp and sand,
The fever-haunted forest and lagoon,
Mysterious Kor, thy fanes forsaken stand,
With lonely towers beneath the lonely Moon!
Not there doth Ayesha linger,--rune by rune
Spelling the scriptures of a people banned,--
The world is disenchanted! oversoon
Shall Europe send her spies through all the land!_

_Nay, not in Kor, but in whatever spot,
  In fields, or towns, or by the insatiate sea,
Hearts brood o'er buried Loves and unforgot,
  Or wreck themselves on some Divine decree,
Or would o'er-leap the limits of our lot,
  There in the Tombs and deathless, dwelleth SHE!_




DEDICATION.


_KOR_, _Jan._ 30, 1887.

_DEAR ALLAN QUATERMAIN,

You, who, with others, have aided so manfully in the Restoration of
King Romance, know that His Majesty is a Merry Monarch.

You will not think, therefore, that the respectful Liberty we have
taken with your Wondrous Tale (as Pamela did with the 137th Psalm)
indicates any lack of Loyalty to our Lady Ayesha.

Her beauties are beyond the reach of danger from Burlesque, nor
does_ her _form flit across our humble pages.

May you restore to us yet the prize of her perfections, for we, at
least, can never believe that she wholly perished in the place of the
Pillar of Fire!

Yours ever,

TWO OF THE AMA LO-GROLLA._




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER                                         PAGE

   I. EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION                        1

  II. POLLY'S NARRATIVE                           12

 III. LEONORA'S DISCOVERY                         18

  IV. THE EQUIPMENT                               27

   V. DOWN THE DARK RIVER                         31

  VI. THE ZU                                      41

 VII. AMONG THE LO-GROLLAS                        49

VIII. HE                                          59

  IX. THE POWER OF HE                             76

   X. A BODY IN PAWN                              81

  XI. THE WIZARD UNBOSOMS                         91

 XII. THE WIZARD'S SCHEME                         97

XIII. THE PERILOUS PATH                          103

 XIV. THE MAGIC CHAIR                            113

  XV. THE END                                    116




HE.




CHAPTER I.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.


As I sat, one evening, idly musing on memories of roers and Boers, and
contemplating the horns of a weendigo I had shot in Labrador and the
head of a Moo Cow[1] from Canada, I was roused by a ring at the door
bell.

      [1]
      A literary friend to whom I have shown your MS. says a
      weendigo is Ojibbeway for a cannibal. And why do you shoot
      poor Moo Cows?--PUBLISHER.

      Mere slip of the pen. Meant a Cow Moose. Literary gent no
      sportsman.--ED.

      All right.--PUBLISHER.

The hall-porter presently entered, bearing a huge parcel, which had
just arrived by post. I opened it with all the excitement that an
unexpected parcel can cause, and murmured, like Thackeray's sailor-man,
'Claret, perhaps, Mumm, I hope----'

It was a Mummy Case, by Jingo!

This was no common, or museum mummy case. The lid, with the gilded
mask, was absent, and the under half or lower segment, painted all over
with hieroglyphics of an unusual type, and _green_ in colour--had
obviously been used as a cradle for unconscious infancy. A baby had
slept in the last sleeping-place of the dead! What an opportunity for
the moralist! But I am not a collector of cradles.

Who had sent it, and why?

The question was settled by an envelope in a feminine hand, which, with
a cylindrical packet, fell out of the Mummy Case, and contained a
letter running as follows:--

    _'Lady Betty's, Oxford._

    _'My dear Sir,--You have not forgotten me and my friend Leonora
    O'Dolite?_

    _'The Mummy Case which encloses this document is the Cradle of
    her ancient Race._

    _'We are, for reasons you will discover in the accompanying
    manuscript, about to start for Treasure Island, where, if anywhere
    in this earth, ready money is to be found on easy terms of personal
    insecurity.'_

'Oh, confound it,' I cried, 'here's another fiend of a woman sending me
another manuscript! They are always at it! Wants to get it into a
high-class magazine, as usual.' And my guess was correct.

The letter went on:--

    '_You, who are so well known, will have no difficulty in getting
    the editor of the Nineteenth Century, or the Quarterly Review, or
    Bow Bells, to accept my little contribution.