My mind's eye singled out those who were sealed to slaughter, and there rushed in upon my heart a great sense of the mystery of human life, and an overwhelming sorrow at its futility and sadness.

To-night these thousands slept their healthy sleep, to-morrow they, and many others with them, ourselves perhaps among them, would be stiffening in the cold; their wives would be widows, their children fatherless, and their place know them no more for ever.

Only the old moon would shine on serenely, the night wind would stir the grasses, and the wide earth would take its rest, even as it did aeons before we were, and will do aeons after we have been forgotten.
Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains.

His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends--the end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us also! Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never _die_, though they blend and change, and change again for ever.
All sorts of reflections of this nature passed through my mind--for as I grow older I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me--while I stood and stared at those grim yet fantastic lines of warriors, sleeping, as their saying goes, "upon their spears." "Curtis," I said, "I am in a condition of pitiable fear." Sir Henry stroked his yellow beard and laughed, as he answered-- "I have heard you make that sort of remark before, Quatermain." "Well, I mean it now.

Do you know, I very much doubt if one of us will be alive to-morrow night.