"Allan and the Ice Gods"
Luna Lady Ragnall, with whom Allan Quatermain was involved in "The Ivory Child" and "The Ancient Allan", has died (on the spot of her late husband's violent death some years before). She leaves her entire fortune to Quatermain, including the ancestral home Ragnall Castle. However, as she anticipated, Quatermain declined the bequest, and the estate was divided up among various charities, the castle becoming a county hospital.
Among the personal effects left to Quatermain is a letter, which recalls to his memory the shared vision of ancient Egypt and Persia, when Quatermain was the count Shabaka, and Lady Ragnall was the princess and priestess Amada. She added details of which he was unaware, such as that they had founded an empire in the south - the possible ancestral empire of the later Kendah. Lady Ragnall also left Quatermain the remaining Taduki, a potent drug which was the instrument through which these visions were raised.
Quatermain was tempted to use the drug, and gave way to temptation during the visit of his friend and colleague Captain Good.
Quatermain finds himself (in his vision) Wi the Hunter, a neolithic caveman of about 30 years. His wife is Aaka, of a similar age, and son Foh (10). Their daughter Fo-a (9) has just been killed by their chief, Henga (40), so as to goude Wi to challenge him to fight - as is his right. With the help of his slave Pag (a deformed dwarf, who is the ancestral Hottentot Hans), Wi defeats Henga, using an axe Pag has made from a meteoric iron stone and a half-fossilised deer bone handle.
The tribe of which Wi is a leading member is a few hundred strong. They live on the shore of glacier-bound and forested country somewhere to the north. Because they have no contact with outsiders they believe they are the entire race of man - although Pag, who is of a sceptical nature, doubts this. Their gods include the preserved mamoth and caveman buried in a glacier - the so-called "Ice Gods". They are in the care of N'gae, the magician, and his wife Taren. It is to the Ice Gods that Wi prays, but they give him no answer.
Moananga the happy faced, Wi's brother (Captain Good), and his wife Tana, are closest to Wi and his family. Other leading characters are Wini-wini the shudderer, the horn-blower, Turi the avaricious, a hoarder of food, and Pitokiti the unlucky. There are also Whaka the bird of ill omen, Hou the unstable, Raki the rich (who trades in stone axes and fish hooks), and Hotoa the slow-speeched. Urk the aged, the wizard, is the oldest member of the tribe, but his recollection of past events isn't always accurate.
Now that Wi is chief he ends the tyranny of the chief, and introduces new laws. The principal ones are that female infants are not to be exposed, and that polygamy is to end. This latter law causes some controversy, and the former leads Wi to assume responsibility for a number of infants. Wi's authority is sorely tested, but survives with the help of Pag and Moananga.
Aaka is jealous of Pag's influence over Wi. She still loves Wi, but is unbalanced as a result of Fo-a's death.
There is a severe winter, and the tribe only survive because Wi had forced them to collect more firewood and winter provender than usual. But they suffer from the attacks of the famished wolves. They destroy these be leading them into a trap, but only after Pag uses his foster-mother as a lure. Pag was exposed as a child, but survived by being suckled by a wolf. This same wolf is now leader of all the wolves, and knew him still.
The tribe is now menaced by a sabre toothed tiger - the more superstitious in the tribe thinking it is Henga returned. Again with the help of Pag (who disguises himself in an old tiger skin cloak) Wi kills the tiger, and gets a new chiefly cloak.
Wi is unhappy that all his efforts on behalf of the tribe seem to be unappreciated. As he walks along the beach (looking for the arrival of the seals) he sees a canoe - though he doesn't yet know what a canoe is. There is a woman in it. This is Laleela (Lady Ragnall), who has come from the south. She is moved into the hut of Rahi the miser, who has just died, and tended to by Pag. She becomes head nurse to the abandoned girl-children.
Laleela is taught to speak the tribe's language by Pag. She tells them she is the daughter of a great one in the south, and that she fled north to escape marriage to her uncle, who wished to become king. Aaka and Pag are jealous of Laleela, who has a great hold over Wi, due to her beauty and her intelligence. She is warned however by Pag that there is a plot to kill her, and she wanders away. She returns in a hurry, pursued by a mob of fierce-looking men, the rde beards from the north. With Laleela's advice the tribe defeat the attackers, but Laleela is wounded saving Wi from an arrow. He declares his love for her, but cannot marry her because of the new law.
Wi now kills a great aurochs, though he looses his hunting dog Yow. Wi hoped he himself might be killed, because he could see no other way to escape the tangled net he was in. The tribe are divided, many thinking that Laleela is a sea-witch, who has poisoned the mind of Wi. Moananga and even Aaka are however secretly her friends. Certainly Wi renounces the Ice-Gods, in favour of the worship of Laleela, which is a form of moon-worship.
The next winter is even more fierce, and the following spring is miserable. The tribe call for a two-legged sacrifice to appease the Ice-Gods. This must be from the household of the chief. They all meet at the base of the glacier to hear Wi's choice, with the tribe on one side and Wi and his family, with Moananga and Laleela, on the other. Wi proposes to offer himself as the sacrifice, but the entire tribe is destroyed when the glacier crashes down to the sea. Only Wi, Aaka, Foh, Pag, Laleela, Moananga and Tana survive.
They escape in Laleela's canoe, heading south. Initially they drag the boat over the ice-flows, but later the ice itself floats south. They are carried along on it. They only take to the boat when the ice begins to break up, within sight of Laleela's homeland. The boat is too small for the whole party, so Wi jumps back onto the flow. Pag joins him, to await their inevitable death on the ice. Just as the vision ends Wi (or rather Quatermain) sees a woman jump from the boat. But whether it is Laleela or Aaka he cannot tell, and the reader is left to speculate.
This is an interesting account of one man out of time - literally. Not only is Quatermain seeing a vision of himself tens or even hundreds of thousands of years ago, but Wi himself was out of time with his tribe. His advanced ideas were not appreciated, but perhaps his son was able to carry on the cause (there is a hint to this effect).
The story, aside from its fantastic elements, is relatively weak in structure, and the characterisation of the secondary characters is weak - they are little more than standard types. There are some interesting elements, however, such as the antediluvian religion (the frozen mammoth in the glacier), and Wi's struggle for certainty and something more profound than these cold and distant gods. Aside from that the story tends to be episodic, or rather akin to a saga, with the hero battling one enemy after another - Henga, the big cat, the wolves, the Auroch, and even the cold of winter - until the advancing ice age proves too much for him. One feels for his loneliness and sense of frustration. Yet it is an inarticulate frustration of the semi-savage.
The conflict between Laleela and Aaka, two quite dissimilar women and yet both in love with Wi, may be said to echo Haggard's own personal life.