The Land Leviathan

EPILOGUE

It was getting on towards evening by the time I read the last few pages of Bastable's manuscript, then picked up his note again, plainly written some time later, when he had become more depressed:

I am going to try my luck again. This time if I am not successful I doubt I shall have the courage to continue with my life (if it is mine).

I sighed, turning the note over and over in my hand, baffled and feeling that I must surely, this time, be dreaming.

Miss Persson had gone - vanished into nowhere with her bandits and her guns of peculiar design and unbelievable efficiency (surely proof of Bastable's own story and of his theories concerning her!). All I had left was the horse which, if I was lucky, if I did not lose my bearings, if I wasn't slaughtered by bandits, might get me back, say, to Shanghai. I had lost most of my baggage, a fair amount of money and a good deal of time, and all I had to show for it was a mystifying manuscript! Moreover, Miss Persson herself had become just as tantalizing a mystery as Bastable. I was very little better off, as regards my own peace of mind, than when I set out.

Eventually I rose, went to my own room, and fell immediately asleep. In the morning I felt almost surprised when I saw the manuscript still beside me and, as I peered from my window, the horse placidly cropping at some sparse grass. I found a piece of paper and scribbled a note to Miss (or was it Mrs?) Persson, thanking her for her hospitality and her manuscript. Then, by way of a joke that was half serious, I scribbled my address in London and invited her to drop in and see me 'if you are ever in my part of the twentieth century again'.

A month later, thin and exhausted, I arrived in Shanghai. I spent no more time in China than was necessary to get a passage home.

And here, sitting at my desk in my little study with its window overlooking the rolling, permanent hills of the West Riding, I read through Bastable's manuscript and I try to understand the implications of his adventures, and I fail.

If anyone else ever reads this, perhaps they will be able to make more of it than I.