The Romance of Golden Star ...Griffith, George Chetwynd
Science
The Romance of Golden Star ...
Griffith, George Chetwynd
Fantasy fiction
The greatest of these is a high white rock carved all over into steps
and seats and altars and basins, which are said to have been made to
catch the blood of the living sacrifices that were offered up here by a
race of men whose name has been forgotten. It is called in our language
the Sayacusca, or Tired Stone, for an old tradition says that ages ago
it was brought from the mountains by the toil of ten thousand men, and
when it reached its present place it rolled over and killed three
hundred of them, and could never be moved again upon its journey.
On the south side of this there is a great cleft from the top to the
bottom, and up the sides of this cleft are the two halves of a stairway,
which was carved there before some earthquake rent the stone in twain,
and under this is a deep dark pool of water. At the entrance to the
cleft I stopped and beckoned to the others to come round me. Then I told
them that they were about to see that which no man then alive on earth
had ever seen, and made all swear by the Glory of the Sun that each and
every one of them would slay without pity him who revealed anything seen
or heard that night, even though he were his own brother, or his own
father, or his own son. As for Djama, they held him there bound and
blindfolded amongst them, and when he tried to speak they stopped his
mouth at my bidding, for I had told them that I would be answerable for
him, since I had brought him here for my own purposes.
Then I made two of the men stretch a cord tightly across the mouth of
the cleft close down to the ground, and to the middle of this I tied
another cord, and stretched it out straight twelve foot-lengths from the
centre, and here I bade them clear away the bushes, and dig. Then axe
and hoe and spade went to work. In that clear air, and under that
cloudless sky, the stars gave light enough to work by, and soon a space
had been cleared, and a round hole about three feet across was being dug
down through the loose, rocky soil.
When it was about half the depth of a man the spades struck on the solid
rock below, and could go no farther. When Tupac told me of this, I, who
had been standing by the cleft, looking--full of strange thoughts--down
into the dark pool of water, called the man who had been digging out of
the hole, and, taking an iron bar from Tupac, I dropped into it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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