After an affair with a Mrs. Agnes Keith-Wessington in Simla, the narrator, Jack, repudiates her and eventually becomes engaged to Miss Kitty Mannering.

Then, to his astonishment, the rickshaw and the men pulling it pass through a horse, revealing themselves to be phantoms, bearing the departed ghost of Mrs. Wessington.

Jack loses hope and begins wandering the city aimlessly, accompanied by the ghost of Mrs. Wessington.

One evening Morrowbie Jukes, an Englishman, is feeling a bit feverish and the barking of the dogs outside his tent is upsetting him.

He awakens the next morning to find himself in a village of the living dead, where people who appear to have died of, for instance, cholera, but who revived when their bodies were about to be burned, are imprisoned.

Upon seeing him bleed, the priests realized that he was not a god and the Kafiristanis immediately sought to kill Dravot and Carnahan.

One clan chief, whom they called "Billy Fish", helped them to escape, but they eventually were caught and Dravot was dropped from a rope bridge into a gorge to his death.

Dravot's severed head and golden crown, which Carnahan was carrying with him when he visited the narrator, are not found among his possessions.