unless the ingredients you mix in your caldron have poisonous
fumes."

"It is not that. The ingredients I use are not poisons."

"What other danger, except you dread your own Eastern slaves? But,
if so, why lead them to these solitudes; and, if so, why not bid me
be armed?"

"The Eastern slaves, fulfilling my commands, wait for my summons,
where their eyes cannot see what we do. The danger is of a kind in
which the boldest son of the East would be more craven, perhaps,
that the daintiest Sybarite of Europe, who would shrink from a
panther and laugh at a ghost. In the creed of the Dervish, and of
all who adventure into that realm of Nature which is closed to
philosophy and open to magic, there are races in the magnitude of
space unseen as animalcules in the world of a drop. For the tribes
of the drop science has its microscope. Of the host of yon azure
Infinite magic gains sight, and through them gains command over
fluid conductors that link all the parts of creation. Of these
races, some are wholly indifferent to man, some benign to him, and
some deadly hostile. In all the regular and prescribed conditions
of mortal being, this magic realm seems as blank and tenantless as
yon vacant air. But when a seeker of powers beyond the rude
functions by which man plies the clockwork that measures his hours,
and stops when its chain reaches the end of its coil, strives to
pass over those boundaries at which philosophy says, 'Knowledge
ends'--then, he is like all other travelers in regions unknown; he
must propitiate or brave the tribes that are hostile--must depend
for his life on the tribes that are friendly. Though your science