Book Description

"Here upon a second marble pedestal stood an object that gleamed dimly through the gloom. It was about ten inches or a foot high, but in that place nothing more could be seen of it, except that it was yellow and had the general appearance of a toad. For some reason it seemed to attract Sir Robert Aylward, for he halted to stare at it, then stretched out his hand and switched on another lamp, in the hard brilliance of which the thing upon the pedestal suddenly declared itself, leaping out of the darkness into light. It was a terrible object, a monstrosity of indeterminate sex and nature, but surmounted by a woman's head and face of extraordinary, if devilish loveliness, sunk back between high but grotesquely small shoulders, like to those of a lizard, so that it glared upwards. The workmanship of the thing was rude yet strangely powerful. Whatever there is cruel, whatever there is devilish, whatever there is inhuman in the dark places of the world, shone out of the jeweled eyes which were set in that yellow female face, yellow because its substance was of gold. A hollow, life-sized mask with two tiny frog-like legs. "You are an ugly brute," muttered Sir Robert, contemplating this effigy, "From the day when Vernon brought you into my office, my luck turned, and to judge from the smile on your sweet countenance, I don't think the worst is over..." One of the lost adventure novels of H. Ridder Haggard, The Yellow God: An Idol of Africa, is both a spell-binding mystery and an exotic, action-filled adventure. Sir Robert Aylward has a mysterious gold mask in his posession and to unlock its secrets will bring death! This heirloom edition is the inaugural title of The Essential Adventure Library, an entertaining collection of hard-to-find adventure stories. Visit www.EssentialLibrary.com to see all the titles in this series.