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question, this matter of universities and digs and claims to antiquities, and I was in no mood for it just then. I felt hot all over. My stomach was heaving, which almost never happens to me. "I've got to see that cave again. God help me, I know why you came back here. I understand everything. I want to go back at least once, maybe twice, how do I know - ." I broke off. The wave of sickness passed.

She was staring at me as if she were in grave and secret distress. She looked as sick as I felt. With both her hands, she clawed at her thick hair and drew it back from her lovely forehead. Her green eyes appeared hot.

"Now, you know," I said, "that we have four men with us that can get this mask out of the country and back to New Orleans with no difficulty. Shall I give it to them now?"

"No, don't do anything with it just yet," she said. She stood up. "I'm going to the church."

"What for?" I asked her.

"To pray, David!" she said impatiently, glowering down at me. "Don't you believe in anything really?" she demanded. "I'm going into the church to pray." And on her way she went.

She'd been gone for about twenty minutes when I finally poured myself a glass of the rum. I was so thirsty. It was strange to be thirsty and sick at the same time. Except for the sound of a few chickens or turkeys, I didn't honestly know which, the village was quiet, and no one came to disturb my solitude in the tent.

I stared at the mask, and I realized that my head was aching terribly, that indeed a throbbing had commenced behind my eyes. I didn't think too much about it, as headaches have never been a torment to me, until I realized that the mask was becoming a blur in my sight.

I tried to refocus. I couldn't. Indeed, I felt hot all over, and every tiny insect bite which I'd suffered began to make itself known.

"This is nonsense," I said aloud, "I've had every damned injection known to modern medicine, including several that weren't known when Matthew got his fever." Then I realized I was talking to myself I poured another good shot of the rum and drank it down straight. It seemed to me, rather vaguely, that I would feel much better if the tent weren't so crowded, and I wished that all the people would leave.

Then I realized that there couldn't be people in the tent with me. No one had come in. I tried to regain a consistent memory of the last few moments, but something had been lost. I turned and looked at the mask again and then I drank some of the rum, which by now tasted marvelous, and I put down the glass and picked up the mask.

It seemed as light as it was precious, and I held it up so that the light shone through it, and it seemed for a moment to be quite definitely alive. A voice was whispering to me rather feverishly as to all manner of small things which I had to worry about, and someone said:

"Others will come when thousands of years have passed." Only the words I heard were not in a language which I understood. "But I do understand you," I said aloud, and then the whispering voice said something that seemed a curse and an ominous prediction. It had to do with the fact that certain things were best left unexplored.

The tent seemed to be moving. Rather, the place where I was seemed to be moving. I put the mask against my skin and I felt steadier. But the entire world had changed. I had changed.

I was standing on a high pavilion and I could see the beautiful mountains all around me, the lower portions of the slopes covered in deep green forest, and the sky itself was brightly blue.

I looked down and I saw a crowd of thousands surrounding the pavilion. Over on the tops of other pyramids there stood huge masses of people. The people were whispering and shouting and chanting. And there was a small group on my pavilion, all of them faithfully at my side.

"You will call down the rain," said the voice in my ear, "and it will come. But one day, the snow will come instead of the rain, and on that day, you will die."

"No, that will never