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"Great God!" burst forth Cairnes, his voice so close as to startle me "'T is like the end of the world!"

"Be still," I co hi torches rounded the rock projection the lights glistening over the half-naked bodies of the bearers Saint Andrew! it was a weird sight, one to strike terror to the soul! With gritted teeth, , I looked out upon it The leader was a priest, black fro devilish in the torch flare, his coarse hair h in horrid reseed a mob of warriors, women, and children, half-nude bodies striped with red and yellow, aunder the fla themselves prostrate before the altar It see forth fro streaed streaks across the little patch of sky, and the black smoke of the torches curled upward to the roof Their appearance was not human, but that of de their teeth and howling; many yelped in fiendish chorus; others brandished weapons aloft in the yellow fla snakes on the rock floor It was a pandemonium, a babel, an unspeakable hell To count was i with guttural, inarticulate cries The busily flitting priests stirred up the wood until the blaze leaped nearly to the roof,of the tribesers leapt into the air, flinging their li in violence, their grotesquely painted faces beco passion They becaht was cruelty I saw the the flesh till blood ran Heartsick and trelanced aside atthe stone, his eyes ith horror, his countenance death-like; Cairnes was upon his knees, his great hands gripped, staring straight down like so

It hen I turned back, loathing the sight yet unable to resist facing it, that I beheld for the first tiht--Eloise, De Noyan, and the Queen Naladi An instant I blindedthat the horror had turned my brain, that all this was vision Yet, as I ventured to look again, they were there before ure aht, with proud, imperious face, crowned by the brilliant hair, radiant and sparkling in the flame Beside her loitered De Noyan, like one who enjoyed a spectacle arranged for his pleasure, his face darkening so, yet debonair and careless, his waxed ers in his waist-belt About the tere ranged a fringe of warriors, their flint-headed spears rising an impenetrable wall, while farther behind, separated and alone, the light of the fire barely revealing her presence, stood Eloise, a savage guard on either side of her I caught the outline of her face, i as if in supplication; then I perceived so an oath, I crept back to the pile of weapons in the corner, gripped a war-club, and, returning as silently, thrust a second into the unconscious hands of Cairnes Our eyes rimly, his jaws set like a steel trap If need should arise ould die fighting like cornered rats