This novel is the final volume of the Allan Quatermain saga. Once more Quatermain takes the hallucinogenic taduki drug, as he did in previous novels, and he finds himself reliving as Wi, an civilized man living in the barbaric ice age as part of a clan of cavemen.
The novel has been noted as a treatment of the topics of eugenics and evolution in literature and culture.
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Генри Райдер Хаггард. Allan and the Ice-Gods
Chapter 1. Allan Refuses a Fortune
Chapter 2. Back to the Past
Chapter 3. Wi Seeks a Sign
Chapter 4. The Tribe
Chapter 5. The Ax that Pag Made
Chapter 6. The Death of Henga
Chapter 7. The Oath of Wi
Chapter 8. Pag Traps the Wolves
Chapter 9. Wi Meets the Tiger
Chapter 10. The Boat and Its Burden
Chapter 11. Laleela
Chapter 12. The Mother of the Cast-Outs
Chapter 13. The Lesson of the Wolf Mother
Chapter 14. The Red-Beards
Chapter 15. Wi Kisses Laleela
Chapter 16. The Aurochs and the Star
Chapter 17. Wi Defies the Gods
Chapter 18. The Sacrifice
Chapter 19. Which?
Chapter 20. The Sum of the Matter
Отрывок из книги
Had I the slightest qualification for the task, I, Allan Quatermain, would like to write an essay on Temptation.
This, of course, comes to all, in one shape or another, or at any rate to most, for there are some people so colourless, so invertebrate that they cannot be tempted – or perhaps the subtle powers which surround and direct, or misdirect, us do not think them worth an effort. These cling to any conditions, moral or material, in which they may find themselves, like limpets to a rock; or perhaps float along the stream of circumstance like jellyfish, making no effort to find a path for themselves in either case, and therefore die as they have lived – quite good because nothing has ever moved them to be otherwise – the objects of the approbation of the world, and, let us hope, of Heaven also.
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“Yes, but, as it chances, Mr. Mellis, I have ideas upon this matter which you may think peculiar. I do not wish my son to begin life with enormous resources, or even the prospect of them. I wish him to fight his own way in the world. He is going to be a doctor. When he has succeeded in his profession and learned what it means to earn one’s own bread, it will be time for him to come into other people’s money. Already I have explained this to him with reference to my own, and being a sensible youth, he agrees with me.”
“I daresay,” groaned the lawyer. “Such – well, failings – as yours, are often hereditary.”
