titillant and vaporous with what he could not tell was colour or
was sound. In that moment the interstices of matter were his, and
the interfusings and intermating transfusings of matter and force.

Time passed. At the last Bassett was brought back from his ecstasy
by an impatient movement of Ngurn. He had quite forgotten the old
devil-devil one. A quick flash of fancy brought a husky chuckle
into Bassett's throat. His shot-gun lay beside him in the litter.
All he had to do, muzzle to head, was to press the trigger and blow
his head into nothingness.

But why cheat him? was Bassett's next thought. Head-hunting,
cannibal beast of a human that was as much ape as human,
nevertheless Old Ngurn had, according to his lights, played squarer
than square. Ngurn was in himself a forerunner of ethics and
contract, of consideration, and gentleness in man. No, Bassett
decided; it would be a ghastly pity and an act of dishonour to
cheat the old fellow at the last. His head was Ngurn's, and
Ngurn's head to cure it would be.

And Bassett, raising his hand in signal, bending forward his head
as agreed so as to expose cleanly the articulation to his taut
spinal cord, forgot Balatta, who was merely a woman, a woman merely
and only and undesired. He knew, without seeing, when the razor-
edged hatchet rose in the air behind him. And for that instant,
ere the end, there fell upon Bassett the shadows of the Unknown, a
sense of impending marvel of the rending of walls before the
imaginable. Almost, when he knew the blow had started and just ere
the edge of steel bit the flesh and nerves it seemed that he gazed
upon the serene face of the Medusa, Truth--And, simultaneous with