CHAPTER V.

      THE MIRAGE

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      Jim had sat silent, watching me, but now and again I had seen the Indian stoicism drop from his face. He leaned over and put a hand on my shoulder.

      “Leif,” he said quietly, “how could I have known? For the first time, I saw you afraid — it hurt me. I did not know . . . .”

      From Tsantawu, the Cherokee, this was much. “It’s all right, Indian. Snap back,” I said roughly. He sat for a while not speaking, throwing little twigs on the fire.

      “What did you friend Barr say about it?” he asked abruptly.

      “He gave me hell,” I said. “He gave me hell with the tears streaming down his cheeks. He said that never had anyone betrayed science as I had since Judas kissed Christ. He was keen on mixed metaphors that got under your skin. That went deep under mine, for it was precisely what I was thinking of myself — not as to science but as to the girl. I had given her the kiss of Judas all right. Barr said that I had been handed the finest opportunity man ever had given him. I could have solved the whole mystery of the Gobi and its lost civilization. I had run away like a child from a bugaboo. I was not only atavistic in body, I was atavistic in brain. I was a blond savage cowering before my mumbo-jumbos. He said that if he had been given my chance he would have let himself be crucified to have learned the truth. He would have, too. He was not lying.”

      “Admirably scientific,” said Jim. “But what did he say about what you saw?”

      “That is was nothing but hypnotic suggestion by the old priest. I had seen what he had willed me to see — just as before, under his will, I had seen myself riding to the temple. The girl hadn’t dissolved. She had probably been standing in the wings laughing at me. But if everything that my ignorant mind had accepted as true had been true then my conduct was even more unforgivable. I should have remained, studied the phenomena and brought back the results for science to examine. What I had told him of the ritual of Khalk’ru was nothing but the second law of thermo-dynamics expressed in terms of anthropomorphism. Life was an intrusion upon Chaos, using that word to describe the unformed, primal state of the universe. An invasion. An accident. In time all energy would be changed to static heat, impotent to give birth to any life whatsoever. The dead universes would float lifelessly in the illimitable void. The void was eternal, life was not. Therefore the void would absorb it. Suns, worlds, gods, men, an things animate, would return to the void. Go back to Chaos. Back to Nothingness. Back to Khalk’ru. Or if my atavistic brain preferred the term — back to the Kraken. He was bitter.”

      “But the others saw the girl taken, you say. How did he explain that?”

      “Oh, easily. That was mass hypnotism-like the Angels of Mons, the ghostly bowmen of Crecy and other collective hallucinations of the War. I had been a catalyzer. My likeness to the traditional ancient race, my completeness as a throwback, my mastery at Khalk’ru’s ritual, the faith the Uighurs had in me — all this had been the necessary element in bringing about the collective hallucination of the tentacle. Obviously the priests had long been trying to make work a drug in which an essential chemical was lacking. I, for some reason, was the missing chemical — the catalyzer. That was all.” Again he sat thinking, breaking the little twigs.

      “It’s a reasonable explanation. But you weren’t convinced?”

      “No, I wasn’t convinced — I saw the girl’s face when the tentacle touched her.” He arose, stood staring toward the north.

      “Leif,” he asked suddenly, “what did you do with the ring?”

      I drew out the little buckskin pouch, opened it and handed the ring to him. He examined it closely, returned it to me.

      “Why did you keep it, Leif?”

      “I’don’t know.” I slipped the ring over my thumb. “I Didn’t give it back to the old priest; he didn’t ask for it. Oh, hell — I’ll tell you why I kept it — for the same reason Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner had the albatross tied round his neck. So I couldn’t forget I’m a murderer.”

      I put the ring back in the buckskin bag, and dropped it down my neck. Faintly from the north came a roll of drums. It did not seem to travel with the wind this time. It seemed to travel underground, and died out deep beneath us.

      “Khalk’ru!” I said.

      “Well. don’t let’s keep the old gentleman waiting,” said Jim cheerfully.

      He busied himself with the packs, whistling. Suddenly he turned to me.

      “Listen, Leif. Barr’s theories sound good to me. I’m not saying that if I’d been in your place I would have accepted them. Maybe you’re right. But I’m with Barr — until events, if-when-and-how they occur, prove him wrong.”

      “Fine!” I said heartily, and entirely without sarcasm.

      “May your optimism endure until we get back to New York — if-when-and-how.”

      We shouldered the packs, and took up our rifles and started