And now the clouds formed a dark, fleecy layer above the mountains--soft and black, like mourning crepe. From it there fell perpendicularly a fine rain, as if the heavens were shedding silent tears. The air was clearer above the sea, and moon and evening star stood bright against a pale, greenish sky. Glowing in a cloudless space, the red sun was nearing the horizon. When Johannes turned away and looked toward the mountains, now veiled in leaden mists, a marvelous double rainbow, with its brilliant colors, was spanning the ashen land. Out of a deep valley that cleft the mountains like the gash of a sword, and upon whose sides Johannes thought to have seen dark forests, approached a long, slow-moving procession. Strange, shadowy figures like large night-moths hovered and floated before it, and flew silently like phantoms beside it. Then came gigantic animals with heavy, cautious tread--elephants with swaying trunks and shuffling hide, their bony heads rolling up and down; rhinoceri, with heads held low, and glittering, ill-natured eyes; snuffling, snorting hippopotami, with their watery, cruel glances; indolent, sullen monsters with flabby-fleshed bodies supported by slim little legs; serpents, large and small, gliding and zig-zagging over the ground like an oncoming flood; herds of deer and antelopes and gazelles--all of them distressed and frightened, and jostling one another; troops of buffaloes and cattle, pushing and thrusting; lions and tigers, now creeping stealthily, then bounding lightly up over the turbulent throng, as fishes, chased from below, spring out of the undulating water; and round about the procession, thousands of birds--some of them with slow, heavy wing-strokes--alighting at times upon the rocks by the wayside; others, incessantly on the wing, circling and swaying, back and forth and up and down; finally, myriads of insects--bees and beetles, flies and moths--like great clouds, grey and white and varicolored, all in ceaseless motion. And every creature in the throng which could make a sound made lamentation after its own fashion. The loudest was the worried, smothered lowing of the cattle, the howling and barking of the wolves and hyenas, and the shrill, quivering "oolooloo" of the owls. The whole was one volume of voiced sorrow--an overwhelming cry of woe and lamentation, rising above a continual, sombre humming; and buzzing. "This is only the vanguard," said Wistik, whose despair had calmed a little at the sight of this lively spectacle. "These are only the animals yet. Now the animal-spirits are coming." Then, in a great open space respectfully avoided by all the animals, came a group of wonderful figures. All had the shapes of animals, only they were larger and more perfectly formed. They seemed also to be much more proud and sagacious, and they moved not by means of feet and wings, but floated like shadows, while their eyes and heads seemed to emit rays of light, like the sea on a dark night.