Ships were lost during these dark voyages, and said to have had their crew drowned by the storms, who would otherwise have returned, and if so, then such loss of life had brought no shame to their respective countries, for in the then-current opinion the natural fate of those dead mariners was to be re-born as another race of humans. This was a matter of contention in the court of King Peter, who took it on himself to say, "This was a strange notion, and even if one accepted it, and we could all see that it was so, then it would still stand that King Ahasuerus must look after his courtiers as if they had the same immortality as himself. Moreover, to say otherwise meant that the dead would return as some sort of hostile armies, just as what we have here would." King Peter also ordered an inquiry into the matter, the nature of which was to be kept hidden from the Court's gaze, because it was said that many things, including the nature of God, were best left in ignorance. We must remark here that one of King Ahasuerus's councillors of the Court, a certain Ispa, was a great lover of the dark arts, a magician of the blackest hue, if we may say so, and King Ahasuerus was one of his clients. Ispa, who, by reason of the powers given him by God, could raise storms, cause the earth to dance and move the stars in their courses, make the seas dry up, and could call on the help of the forces of nature, had the habit of raising his clients from the dead, that is to say, they died as men and came to life again as ghosts. Ispa, who lived deep in the wilderness of Abarbenel, had made such fine preparations to perform this rite that he had equipped a great ship fitted with a bridge deck over its main deck, over which was a tower that could be raised and lowered by mechanisms worked by a large windlass. And also, Ispa had a machine that turned three great wheels, each with twenty-four arms, one for each day in the year, which rotated so fast that the whole machine made one whole revolution every twenty-four hours, so that the whole planet of the Earth completed a daily revolution three times a day, which was done under the direction of several mechanical computers by means of gears and levers, thus making it the most well-adjusted, perfect, and accurate machine ever to be designed. Ispa explained his plans to the King, in return for which the King gave Ispa the task of finding some way of ensuring that all his ship's crew came back, otherwise his patron, King Ahasuerus, would feel that he was being cheated and would surely withhold his favour from the magician, who had already taken the job of organising the Court's receptions to the King for this year. "I would," said the King to the courtier after making his proposition, "I would, indeed, love to learn how Ispa proposes to make these ghostly men once again truly alive in our world." "It is a question of using what we can as a weapon against the devilish nature of death, for as long as there is one man, woman, or child on the face of the Earth who needs to be saved from death, then that part of nature is not broken," said the magician. "And is there no part of nature that requires attention?" asked the King, "for surely the evil that is in man cannot be so easy to cure." "This evil," replied the magician, "lies in our knowledge. It is there in all those who have any experience of life, if they will use that knowledge to perform such deeds as are here recorded, so that by this means they can defeat the devil. To defeat the devil, first you need his weaponry, then you can start to understand how he thinks. The sword and other tools are his, but he is not a god of a man's making, nor is his cunning a man's making, for if it were then that man could simply overcome it with his superior understanding. God would then be revealed as a child's toy, and to think this is not to reveal anything of the true nature of God." This much said, Ispa then left to set about the task at hand, which he had said should take just a year, and in which King Ahasuerus was impatient to begin. "The King of Elfland will be bringing his retinue soon," said Ispa to his manservant, "and we can't have anyone here without having thought to give them a surprise." "What sort of surprise?" asked the manservant, who at the sight of his master had lost much of his confidence. "You'll see," said Ispa, "when you meet the devil they will not have the advantage of meeting a man. They will meet with the man of their experience, which is exactly the man they will need to defeat." "Are you well, sir?" said the manservant. "Oh, of course I am, that's the problem, but I'm not afraid of anything, but the man of experience who will meet me is so very old, and it is said he knows all the secrets of magic, which is why we are here. I mean to be ready for him, but I am also going to take him by surprise so that he cannot take advantage of me." Now Ispa had a small collection of such men and women, whose faces he had once taken with all the skill of a skilled artist, who brought to them so many characteristics that they were the image of some devil of ancient legend, and their very looks were so unsettling and demonic that no one ever bothered to look twice at them. Ispa had a thousand questions to ask and this man and woman were enough to answer them, for all questions about the devil were answered by their mouths. "I am coming to the point," said Ispa to his manservant, who was by now very nervous. "Not now, sir," said the manservant, who had heard this speech before. "To your work, if you please," said Ispa, and he got up from his seat at the table and walked off through the castle to a room where two men were awaiting his arrival. These were a magician who was skilled in the art of turning things that should remain invisible into things that could be seen, and a woman whose face had no features but who was entirely without form. This was a creature that Ispa knew could only be created by magic, and he had gone to great expense to bring one such into being, as in all the universe, man had not yet created another of her kind. The King had told him that she was not to be allowed out into the castle, which was why she was confined to the room at the top of the tower, and this was the room in which Ispa now led her. When she entered she said nothing but seemed to stare at Ispa who then said, "So far, so good." Ispa then went to the wall and drew on it with his finger a strange figure which then took on a life of its own. It seemed a little like a star with a tail that made one think of a comet, but it was a star from the very heart of Hell itself, and this was what Ispa had called the figure, which represented that there was only one kind of figure that could destroy all of the evil that could be found in the world, for no man could claim that he knew all the evil that existed, since the universe is so full of strange things, and the evil that man knew was but a fraction of what there was in the universe. The figure that Ispa drew was then the only figure that could destroy all of that evil. The figure turned out to be the image of a man dressed all in black, with the strangest eyes, one would have thought that the devil himself had come down from the Heavens in a fit of jealous rage, or in some other demonic manner. But when the court was told of what had taken place they asked Ispa about this man, for it was rumoured that the King's servants would soon be on the way from the Court to bring him their king to that hall in which he would await death. "Who is this, to be brought before the King?" asked Ispa to the magician, "and how did he come by such a name as 'The Black Gentleman'?" "You know him," said the magician, "you knew him many years ago in a place that is now called Hell." "You have got it wrong, old man," said Ispa, "I have known many men since I was as young as you. His name is Iscariot, that is his name in Hell, and if you mean any man other than him, then I do not want to hear more about him from you, and this is the last time that you are to speak of him." "Take heed that you do not speak of him too often," said the Black Gentleman, "for this is but the first of my friends and this man may be the first in the list, but he is not the last." Now the woman had turned to look at the Black Gentleman, and Ispa could see that she