Produced by Tom Harris, text provided by Litrix Reading Room.
Lord Dunsany
The Last Dream Of Bwona Khubla
How the Office of Postman Fell Vacant In Otford-under-the-Wold
The Prayer Of Boob Aheera
East And West
A Pretty Quarrel
How The Gods Avenged Meoul Ki Ning
The Gift Of The Gods
The Sack Of Emeralds
The Old Brown Coat
An Archive Of The Older Mysteries
A City Of Wonder
Beyond the Fields We Know
Publisher's Note
First Tale: Idle Days on the Yann
Second Tale: A Shop In Go-By Street
Third Tale: The Avenger Of Perdóndaris
[Note that the tale "Idle Days on the Yann" also appears in thecollection "A Dreamer's Tales".]
From steaming lowlands down by the equator, where monstrous orchidsblow, where beetles big as mice sit on the tent-ropes, and firefliesglide about by night like little moving stars, the travelers wentthree days through forests of cactus till they came to the open plainswhere the oryx are.
And glad they were when they came to the water-hole, where only onewhite man had gone before, which the natives know as the camp of BwonaKhubla, and found the water there.
It lies three days from the nearest other water, and when Bwona Khublahad gone there three years ago, what with malaria with which he wasshaking all over, and what with disgust at finding the water-hole dry,he had decided to die there, and in that part of the world suchdecisions are always fatal. In any case he was overdue to die, buthitherto his amazing resolution, and that terrible strength ofcharacter that so astounded his porters, had kept him alive and movedhis safari on.
He had had a name no doubt, some common name such as hangs as likelyas not over scores of shops in London; but that had gone long ago, andnothing identified his memory now to distinguish it from the memoriesof all the other dead but "Bwona Khubla," the name the Kikuyus gavehim.
There is not doubt that he was a fearful man, a man that was dreadedstill for his personal force when his arm was no longer able to liftthe kiboko, when all his men knew he was dying, and to this day thoughhe is dead.
Though his temper was embittered by malaria and the equatorial sun,nothing impaired his will, which remained a compulsive force to thevery last, impressing itself upon all, and after the last, from whatthe Kikuyus say. The country must have had powerful laws that droveBwona Khubla out, whatever country it was.
On the morning of the day that they were to come to the camp of BwonaKhubla all the porters came to the travelers' tents asking for dow.Dow is the white man's medicine, that cures all evils; the nastier ittastes, the better it is. They wanted down this morning to keep awaydevils, for they were near the place where Bwona Khubla died.
The travelers gave them quinine.
By sunset the came to Campini Bwona Khubla and found water there. Hadthey not found water many of them must have died, yet none felt anygratitude to the place, it seemed too ominous, too full of doom, toomuch harassed almost by unseen, irresistible things.
And all the natives came again for dow as soon as the tents werepitched, to protect them from the last dreams of Bwona Khubla, whichthey say had stayed behind when the last safari left taking BwonaKhubla's body back to the edge of civilization to show to the whitemen there th