The fifth hour had passed away, when Ayesha said to me, "Lo! the
circle is fading; the lamps grow dim. Look now without fear on the
space beyond; the eyes that appalled thee are again lost in air, as
lightnings that fleet back into cloud."
I looked up, and the specters had vanished. The sky was tinged
with sulphurous hues, the red and the black intermixed. I
replenished the lamps and the ring in front, thriftily, heedfully;
but when I came to the sixth lamp, not a drop in the vessel that
fed them was left. In a vague dismay, I now looked round the half
of the wide circle in rear of the two bended figures intent on the
caldron. All along that disk the light was already broken, here
and there flickering up, here and there dying down; the six lamps
in that half of the circle still twinkled, but faintly, as stars
shrinking fast from the dawn of day. But it was not the fading
shine in that half of the magical ring which daunted my eye and
quickened with terror the pulse of my heart; the Bush-land beyond
was on fire. From the background of the forest rose the flame and
the smoke--the smoke, there, still half smothering the flame. But
along the width of the grasses and herbage, between the verge of
the forest and the bed of the water creek just below the raised
platform from which I beheld the dread conflagration, the fire was
advancing--wave upon wave, clear and red against the columns of
rock behind; as the rush of a flood through the mists of some Alp
crowned with lightnings.
Roused from my stun at the first sight of a danger not foreseen by
the mind I had steeled against far rarer portents of Nature, I
cared no more for the lamps and the circle. Hurrying hack to
Ayesha I exclaimed: "The phantoms have gone from the spaces in
front; but what incantation or spell can arrest the red march of
the foe speeding on in the rear! While we gazed on the caldron of
life, behind us, unheeded, behold the Destroyer!"
Ayesha looked and made no reply, but, as by involuntary instinct,
bowed her majestic head, then rearing it erect, placed herself yet
more immediately before the wasted form of the young magician (he
still, bending over the caldron, and hearing me not in the
absorption and hope of his watch)--placed herself before him, as
the bird whose first care is her fledgling.
As we two there stood, fronting the deluge of fire, we heard
Margrave behind us, murmuring low, "See the bubbles of light, how
they sparkle and dance--I shall live, I shall live!" And his words
scarcely died in our ears before, crash upon crash, came the fall
of the age-long trees in the forest, and nearer, all near us,
through the blazing grasses, the hiss of the serpents, the scream
of the birds, and the bellow and tramp of the herds plunging wild
through the billowy red of their pastures.
Ayesha now wound her arms around Margrave, and wrenched him,
reluctant and struggling, from his watch over the seething caldron.
In rebuke of his angry exclamations, she pointed to the march of
the fire, spoke in sorrowful tones a few words in her own language,
and then, appealing to me in English, said:
"I tell him that, here, the Spirits who oppose us have summoned a
foe that is deaf to my voice, and--"
"And," exclaimed Margrave, no longer with gasp and effort, but with
the swell of a voice which drowned all the discords of terror and
of agony sent forth from the Phlegethon burning below--"and this
witch, whom I trusted, is a vile slave and impostor, more desiring
my death than my life. She thinks that in life I should scorn and
forsake her, that in death I should die in her arms! Sorceress,
avaunt! Art thou useless and powerless now when I need thee most?
Go! Let the world be one funeral pyre! What to ME is the world?
My world is my life! Thou knowest that my last hope is here--that
all the strength left me this night will die down, like the lamps
in the circle, unless the elixir restore it. Bold friend, spurn
that sorceress away. Hours yet ere those flames can assail us! A
few minutes more, and life to your Lilian and me!"
Thus having said, Margrave turned from us, and cast into the
caldron the last essence yet left in his empty coffer.
Ayesha silently drew her black veil over her face, and turned, with
the being she loved, from the terror he scorned, to share in the
hope that he cherished.
Thus left alone, with my reason disinthralled, disenchanted, I
surveyed more calmly the extent of the actual peril with which we
were threatened, and the peril seemed less, so surveyed.
It is true all the Bush-land behind, almost up to the bed of the
creek, was on fire; but the grasses, through which the flame spread
so rapidly, ceased at the opposite marge of the creek. Watery
pools were still, at intervals, left in the bed of the creek,
shining tremulous, like waves of fire, in the glare reflected from
the burning land; and even where the water failed, the stony course
of the exhausted rivulet was a barrier against the march of the
conflagration. Thus, unless the wind, now still, should rise, and
waft some sparks to the parched combustible herbage immediately
around us, we were saved from the fire, and our work might yet be
achieved.