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 spectres 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 Bushland 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 back 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 disenthralled, 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.
I whispered to Ayesha the conclusion to which I came. “Thinkest thou,”
she answered, without raising her mournful head, “that the Agencies of
Nature are the movements of chance? The Spirits I invoked to his aid
are leagued with the hosts that assail. A mightier than I am has doomed
him!”
Scarcely had she uttered these words before Margrave exclaimed, “Behold
how the Rose of the alchemist’s dream enlarges its blooms from the folds
of its petals! I shall live, I shall live!”
I looked, and the liquid which glowed in the caldron had now taken a
splendour that mocked all comparisons borrowed from the lustre of gems.
In its prevalent colour it had, indeed, the dazzle and flash of the
ruby; but out from the mass of the molten red, broke coruscations of all
prismal hues, shooting, shifting, in a play that made the wavelets them
selves seem living things, sensible of their joy. No longer was there
scum or film upon the surface; only ever and anon a light rosy vapour
floating up, and quick lost in the haggard, heavy, sulphurous air,
hot with the conflagration rushing towards us from behind. And these
coruscations formed, on the surface of the molten ruby, literally the
shape of a Rose, its leaves made distinct in their outlines by sparks of
emerald and diamond and sapphire.
Even while gazing on this animated liquid lustre, a buoyant delight
seemed infused into my senses; all terrors conceived before were
annulled; the phantoms, whose armies had filled the wide spaces in
front, were forgotten; the crash of the forest behind was unheard.
In the reflection of that glory, Margrave’s wan cheek seemed already
restored to the radiance it wore when I saw it first in the framework of
blooms.
As I gazed, thus enchanted, a cold hand touched my own.
“Hush!” whispered Ayesha, from the black veil, against which the rays of
the caldron fell blunt, and absorbed into Dark. “Behind us, the light of
the circle is extinct, but there we are guarded from all save the brutal
and soulless destroyers. But before!--but before!--see, two of the
lamps have died out!--see the blank of the gap in the ring Guard that
breach,--there the demons will enter.”
“Not a drop is there left in his vessel by which to replenish the lamps
on the ring.”
“Advance, then; thou hast still the light of the soul, and the demons
may recoil before a soul that is dauntless and guiltless. If not, Three
are lost!--as it is, One is doomed.”
Thus adjured, silently, involuntarily, I passed from the Veiled Woman’s
side, over the sere lines on the turf which had been traced by the
triangles of light long since extinguished, and towards the verge of
the circle. As I advanced, overhead rushed a dark cloud of wings,--birds
dislodged from the forest on fire, and screaming, in dissonant terror,
as they flew towards the farthermost mountains; close by my feet hissed
and glided the snakes, driven forth from their blazing coverts, and
glancing through the ring, unscared by its waning lamps; all undulating
by me, bright-eyed and hissing, all made innocuous by fear,--even the
terrible Death-adder, which I trampled on as I halted at the verge of
the circle, did not turn to bite, but crept harmless away. I halted at
the gap between the two dead lamps, and bowed my head to look again into
the crystal vessel. Were there, indeed, no lingering drops yet left,
if but to recruit the lamps for some priceless minutes more? As I thus
stood, right into the gap between the two dead lamps strode a gigantic
Foot. All the rest of the form was unseen; only, as volume after volume
of smoke poured on from the burning land behind, it seemed as if one
great column of vapour, eddying round, settled itself aloft from the
circle, and that out from that column strode the giant Foot. And, as
strode the Foot, so with it came, like the sound of its tread, a roll of
muttered thunder.
I recoiled, with a cry that rang loud through the lurid air.
“Courage!” said the voice of Ayesha. “Trembling soul, yield not an inch
to the demon!”
At the charm, the wonderful charm, in the tone of the Veiled Woman’s
voice, my will seemed to take a force more sublime than its own.
I folded my arms on my breast, and stood as if rooted to the spot,
confronting the column of smoke and the stride of the giant Foot. And
the Foot halted, mute.
Again, in the momentary hush of that suspense, I heard a voice,--it was
Margrave’s.
“The last hour expires, the work is accomplished! Come! come! Aid me to
take the caldron from the fire; and quick!--or a drop may be wasted in
vapour--the Elixir of Life from the caldron!”
At that cry I receded, and the Foot advanced.
And at that moment, suddenly, unawares, from behind, I was stricken
down. Over me, as I lay, swept a whirlwind of trampling hoofs and
glancing horns. The herds, in their flight from the burning pastures,
had rushed over the bed of the watercourse, scaled the slopes of the
banks. Snorting and bellowing, they plunged their blind way to the
mountains. One cry alone, more wild than their own savage blare, pierced
the reek through which the Brute Hurricane swept. At that cry of wrath
and despair I struggled to rise, again dashed to earth by the hoofs and
the horns. But was it the dream-like deceit of my reeling senses, or did
I see that giant Foot stride past through the close-serried ranks of
the maddening herds? Did I hear, distinct through all the huge uproar of
animal terror, the roll of low thunder which followed the stride of that
Foot?