The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
General
The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction; Ghost stories
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withdrawn, and the blaze of the fire between Margrave and herself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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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