“Now I will tell you the truth. Not thus do I communicate with those who are afar. Nay, I send out my thought and it flies everywhere to the ends of the earth, so that the whole earth might read it if it could. Yet perchance it is attuned to one mind only among the millions, by which mind it can be caught and interpreted. But for the vulgar—yes, and even for the wise White Man who cannot understand—there remains the symbol of the bats and their message. Why will you always seek the aid of magic to explain natural things, Macumazahn?” Now I reflected that my idea of nature and Zikali’s differed, but knowing that he was mocking me after his custom, and declining to enter into argument as though it were beneath me, I said, “All this is so plain that I wonder you waste breath in setting it out. I only desired to know if you have any answer to your message, however it was sent, and if so—what answer.” “Yes, Macumazahn, as it happens I have; it came to me just as I was waking this morning. This is its substance; that the chief of the Walloos, with whom my heart talked, and, as he believes, most of his people, will be very glad to welcome you in their land, though, as he believes again, the priests of Heu-Heu, who worship him as a god and are sworn to his service, will not be glad. Should you choose to come, the chief will give you all that you desire of the river diamonds or aught else that he possesses, and you can carry away with you, also, the medicine that _I_ desire. Further, he will protect you from dangers so far as he is able. Yet for these gifts he requires payment.” “What payment, Zikali?” “The overthrow of Heu-Heu at your hands.” “And if I cannot overthrow Heu-Heu, Zikali?” “Then certainly you will be overthrown and the bargain will fall to the ground.” “Is it so? Well, if I go, shall I be killed, Zikali?” “Who am I that I should dispense life or death, Macumazahn? Yet,” he added slowly, separating his words by deliberate pinches of snuff—“yet I do not think that you will be killed. If I did I should not trust you to pay me for those oxen on your return. Also I believe that you have much work left to do in the world—my work, some of it, Macumazahn, that could not be carried out without you. This being so, the last thing I should wish would be to send you to your death.” I reflected that probably this was true, since always the old wizard was hinting of some great future enterprise in which we should be mixed up together; also I knew that he had a regard for me in his own strange way, and therefore wished me no evil. Moreover, of a sudden a great longing seized me to undertake this adventure in which perchance I might see remarkable new things—I who was wearying of the old ones. However, I hid this, if anything could be hid from Zikali, and asked in a businesslike fashion, “Where do you want me to go, how far off is it, and if I went, how should I get there?”