One hour passed away; the fagots under the caldron burned clear in
the sullen, sultry air. The materials within began to seethe, and
their color, at first dull and turbid, changed into a pale-rose
hue; from time to time the Veiled Woman replenished the fire, after
she had done so reseating herself close by the pyre, with her head
bowed over her knees, and her face hid under her veil.
The lights in the lamps and along the ring and the triangles now
began to pale. I resupplied their nutriment from the crystal
vessel. As yet nothing strange startled my eye or my ear beyond
the rim of the circle--nothing audible, save, at a distance, the
musical wheel-like click of the locusts, and, farther still, in the
forest, the howl of the wild dogs that never bark; nothing visible,
but the trees and the mountain range girding the plains silvered by
the moon, and the arch of the cavern, the flush of wild blooms on
its sides, and the gleam of dry bones on its floor, where the
moonlight shot into the gloom.
The second hour passed like the first. I had taken my stand by the
side of Margrave, watching with him the process at work in the
caldron, when I felt the ground slightly vibrate beneath my feet,
and looking up, it seemed as if all the plains beyond the circle
were heaving like the swell of the sea, and as if in the air itself
there was a perceptible tremor.
I placed my hand on Margrave's shoulder and whispered, "To me earth
and air seem to vibrate. Do they seem to vibrate to you?"
"I know not, I care not," he answered impetuously. "The essence is
bursting the shell that confined it. Here are my air and my earth!
Trouble me not. Look to the circle--feed the lamps if they fail!"
I passed by the Veiled Woman as I walked toward a place in the ring
in which the flame was waning dim; and I whispered to her the same
question which I had whispered to Margrave. She looked slowly
around and answered, "So is it before the Invisible make themselves
visible! Did I not bid him forbear?" Her head again drooped on
her breast, and her watch was again fixed on the fire.
I advanced to the circle and stooped to replenish the light where
it waned. As I did so, on my arm, which stretched somewhat beyond
the line of the ring, I felt a shock like that of electricity. The
arm fell to my side numbed and nerveless, and from my hand dropped,
but within the ring, the vessel that contained the fluid.
Recovering my surprise or my stun, hastily with the other hand I
caught up the vessel, but some of the scanty liquid was already
spilled on the sward; and I saw with a thrill of dismay, that
contrasted indeed the tranquil indifference with which I had first
undertaken my charge, how small a supply was now left.
I went back to Margrave, and told him of the shock, and of its
consequence in the waste of the liquid.
"Beware," said he, that not a motion of the arm, not an inch of the
foot, pass the verge of the ring; and if the fluid be thus
unhappily stinted, reserve all that is left for the protecting
circle and the twelve outer lamps! See how the Grand Work
advances, how the hues in the caldron are glowing blood-red through
the film on the surface!
And now four hours of the six were gone; my arm had gradually
recovered its strength. Neither the ring nor the lamps had again
required replenishing; perhaps their light was exhausted less
quickly, as it was no longer to be exposed to the rays of the
intense Australian moon. Clouds had gathered over the sky, and
though the moon gleamed at times in the gaps that they left in blue
air, her beam was more hazy and dulled. The locusts no longer were
heard in the grass, nor the howl of the dogs in the forest. Out of
the circle, the stillness was profound.
And about this time I saw distinctly in the distance a vast Eye.
It drew nearer and nearer, seeming to move from the ground at the
height of some lofty giant. Its gaze riveted mine; my blood
curdled in the blaze from its angry ball; and now as it advanced
larger and larger, other Eyes, as if of giants in its train, grew
out from the space in its rear--numbers on numbers, like the
spearheads of some Eastern army, seen afar by pale warders of
battlements doomed to the dust. My voice long refused an utterance
to my awe; at length it burst forth shrill and loud:
"Look, look! Those terrible Eyes! Legions on legions. And hark!
that tramp of numberless feet; THEY are not seen, but the hollows
of earth echo the sound of their march!"
Margrave, more than ever intent on the caldron, in which, from time
to time, he kept dropping powders or essences drawn forth from his
coffer, looked up, defyingly, fiercely:
"Ye come," he said in a low mutter, his once mighty voice sounding
hollow and laboring, but fearless and firm--"ye come--not to
conquer, vain rebels!--ye whose dark chief I struck down at my feet
in the tomb where my spell had raised up the ghost of your first
human master, the Chaldee! Earth and air have their armies still
faithful to me, and still I remember the war song that summons them
up to confront you! Ayesha, Ayesha! recall the wild troth that we
pledged among the roses; recall the dread bond by which we united
our sway over hosts that yet own thee as queen, though my scepter
is broken, my diadem reft from my brows!"
The Veiled Woman rose at this adjuration. Her veil now was
withdrawn, and the blaze of the fire between Margrave and herself
flushed, as with the rosy bloom of youth, the grand beauty of her
softened face. It was seen, detached, as it were, from her dark-
mantled form; seen through the mist of the vapors which rose from
the caldron, framing it round like the clouds that are yieldingly
pierced by the light of the evening star.
Through the haze of the vapor came her voice, more musical, more
plaintive than I had heard it before, but far softer, more tender:
still in her foreign tongue; the words unknown to me, and yet their
sense, perhaps, made intelligible by the love, which has one common
language and one common look to all who have loved--the love
unmistakably heard in the loving tone, unmistakably seen in the
loving face.
A moment or so more and she had come round from the opposite side
of the fire pile, and bending over Margrave's upturned brow, kissed
it quietly, solemnly; and then her countenance grew fierce, her
crest rose erect: it was the lioness protecting her young. She
stretched forth her arm from the black mantle, athwart the pale
front that now again bent over the caldron--stretched it toward the
haunted and hollow-sounding space beyond, in the gesture of one
whose right hand has the sway of the scepter. And then her voice
stole on the air in the music of a chant, not loud yet far-
reaching; so thrilling, so sweet and yet so solemn that I could at
once comprehend how legend united of old the spell of enchantment
with the power of song. All that I recalled of the effects which,
in the former time, Margrave's strange chants had produced on the
ear that they ravished and the thoughts they confused, was but as
the wild bird's imitative carol, compared to the depth and the art
and the soul of the singer, whose voice seemed endowed with a charm
to inthrall all the tribes of creation, though the language it used
for that charm might to them, as to me, be unknown. As the song
ceased, I heard from behind sounds like those I had heard in the
spaces before me--the tramp of invisible feet, the whir of
invisible wings, as if armies were marching to aid against armies
in march to destroy.
"Look not in front nor around," said Ayesha. "Look, like him, on
the caldron below. The circle and the lamps are yet bright; I will
tell you when the light again fails."