With an alarmed glance about us to make sure I had not been overheard, he
answered very low:
“You have guessed it! But keep silent, as you value your life! Stay close
to me and do whatever the others do!”
We were now at the entrance to the temple. Heavy yellow curtains covered
the portal, and within a gong droned slowly.
Summoning courage, we pushed aside the draperies and entered.
The place was large and dimly lighted. Low red seats ran crossways in
long rows. At the far end, against the east wall, was the altar, before
which were drawn deep yellow hangings. In front of these, under a hood
of golden gauze, burned a solitary light. There was a terror in this
mysterious dusk that gave me a strange thrill.
The audience was standing, silent, with bowed heads, by the rows of
seats. Quaking inwardly, we took places in the last row, where the light
was dimmest. So perfectly were our costumes and make-up a match for those
around us that we attracted no attention.
All at once the tempo of the gong’s droning changed, becoming slower and
more weird, and other gongs joined in at intervals. The illumination,
which appeared to come solely from the ceiling, brightened somewhat.
Then a door opened on the right, about midway of the building, and there
appeared a being such as I never beheld before. He was tall and lean and
wore a robe of golden silk. Behind him came another—a priest in superb
violet; and behind him a third in flaming orange. They wore high helmets
with feathery plumes.
In the hands of each priest were peculiar instruments—or images, if
so they might be called. Above a handle about two feet long, held
vertically, was a thin rod curved upward in a semi-circle, at each end of
which was a flat disk about a foot in diameter—one disk of silver, the
other of gold. As I scrutinized these emblems I wondered if they were
meant to symbolize the Seuen-H’sin’s belief in two moons.
Slowly the priests advanced to a central aisle, then forward to an open
space, or hall of prayer, before the altar.
Then a door opened on the left, opposite the first portal, and from it
issued a fourth priest in robes of richest purple, followed by another in
crimson, and still another in wondrous green. They, also, wore the high,
feathery helmets and carried the instruments with gold and silver disks.
When the last three had joined the first trio, other portals opened
along the sides of the temple and half a dozen more priests entered and
strode forward. The brilliant colors of their frocks seemed a part of the
devilish gong-droning. In the dim vastness of the temple they moved on,
silent as ghosts. There was something singularly depressing in the slow,
noiseless steps. It was as if they were walking to their death.
Still the procession grew in numbers. Hitherto unnoticed
portals gave entrance to more yellow, orange and violet-clad
priests—demoniacal-looking beings, with lean, cruel, thoughtful faces and
somber, dreaming eyes.
At last the procession ended. There was a pause, after which the
audience standing among the rows of red seats burst into low murmurs of
supplication. Sometimes the voices rose into a considerable humming
sound; again they sank into a whisper. Suddenly the murmur of voices
ceased and there was a blare of unseen trumpets—a crashing vastness of
sound; harsh, unearthly, infernal, so that I shivered in horror. Nothing
could be seen of the terrible orchestra; its notes seemed to come from a
dark adjoining hall.
Again there was a pause—a thrilling period in which even the droning
gongs were hushed; and then from an unseen portal came, slowly and alone,
a figure that all the rest seemed to have been waiting for.
Leaning close to my ear, Dr. Gresham whispered:
“_The high priest, Kwo-Sung-tao!_”
With leaping interest, I turned to view the personage—and was held
spellbound by the amazing personality of this man who proposed to make
himself emperor of all the world.
He was old, _old_; small, shrunken; a very mummy of a man; bald, and
with a long white mustache; enveloped in a shroud of cloth of gold,
embroidered with crimson dragons and dual gold and silver moons. But
never to my dying day can I forget that face, with its fearful eyes! All
the wisdom and power and wickedness of the world were blended there!
Straight toward the altar the old man walked, looking neither to the
right nor the left; and when he had mounted the steps he paused before
the curtains and turned. As his blazing eyes swept the hall the entire
multitude seemed to shrink and shrivel. An awful, sepulchral silence fell
upon the crowd. The stillness hovered like a living thing. A thrill more
intense than I had ever felt came over me; it swept me on cold waves into
an ocean of strange, pulsing emotion.
Then, abruptly, a hundred cymbals clashed, subdued drums rolled forth,
and the infernal trumpets that had heralded the entrance of the high
priest crashed out a demoniacal peal—a veritable anthem of damnation that
pierced me to the marrow.
The sound died out. The lights, too, began to sink. For a few moments
not a word was spoken; there was the stillness of death, of the end of
things. Presently all the illumination was gone save the solitary hooded
light in front of the altar.
From his place at the head of the steps the high priest, Kwo-Sung-tao,
made a gesture. Silently, and by unseen means, the deep yellow hangings
rolled away.
There, to my amazement, the whole end of the temple was open, and we
could look off from the mountaintop across innumerable valleys to the
great range of peaks that walled the east. Out there the stars were
shining, and near the horizon the blue-green heavens were tinged with a
swimming silver mist.
The altar itself, if such it might be called, was a single block of
undraped stone, about three feet high and four feet long, rising in the
center of the platform.
Hardly had I taken in the scene before two of the priests hurried
forward, dragging between them a nearly-naked and half-swooning Chinaman.
Carrying him up the steps, they flung him on his back upon the altar
block and swiftly fastened his hands and feet to manacles on the sides of
the stone, so that his naked chest was centered upon the pedestal. The
priests then descended from the altar, leaving Kwo-Sung-tao alone beside
the prisoner.
Still within the temple the profound silence reigned. There was not a
whisper, not a rustle of the silken vestments.
But all at once we noticed that the eastern sky was growing brighter.
Then from before the altar a single somber bass rolled forth in a wailing
prayer—a mystical, unearthly sound, coming in shattered sobs:
“_Na-mo O-mi-t’o-fo! Na-mo O-mi-t’o-fo!_”
Suddenly, from over the edge of the world, the moon began to rise!
This was the signal for another hellish blast from the trumpets, followed
by the beginning of a steady humming of countless gongs. Other voices
joined the quivering bass, together growing louder—seeming to complain
and sob and wail like the voices of tortured demons in the abyss.
The rhythmic sounds swelled louder and louder, higher and higher, until
the orb of night had climbed clear of the wall of mountains.
Directly against the silver disk I now saw silhouetted the stone altar
holding its shrinking prisoner, with the high priest standing close
beside him. The priest’s right arm was upraised, and in his hand there
gleamed a knife.
Still the music grew in volume—tremendous, stunning, a terrific battle of
sound.
All at once the high priest’s knife flashed downward—straight and deep
into the breast of the quivering wretch upon the stone—and in a moment
his other hand was raised in salutation to the moon, and in it was
clutched the dripping heart of the human sacrifice!
At the sight my limbs grew shaky and my senses swam.
But at this instant, like a blow upon the head, came a lightning-crash
of cymbals, a smiting of great gongs, and a climacteric roar from those
agonizing trumpets of hell. Then even the single altar light went out,
plunging the great hall in darkness.
Instantly I felt Dr. Gresham’s hand upon my arm, and, dazed and helpless,
I was dragged out of the temple.
Outside the air released me from my stupor, and I raced beside the
scientist to the spot where we had left our outer garments. In the shadow
of the wall we slipped these on, and then fled panic-stricken down the
mountainside.
_CHAPTER VIII._