They sat, thousands of them, crouched silently on their stone
seats, gazing, motionless as blocks of wood.
The center of the cavern was a lake, taking up something more
than half of its area. The water was black as night, and
curiously smooth and silent. Its banks sloped by degrees for a
hundred feet or so, but at its edge there was a perpendicular
bank of rock fifteen or twenty feet in height.
Near the middle of the lake, ranged at an equal distance from its
center and from each other, were three--what shall I call
them?--islands, or columns. They were six or eight feet across at
their top, which rose high above the water.
On top of each of these columns was a huge vat or urn, and from
each of the urns arose a steady, gigantic column of fire. These
it was that gave the light, and it was little wonder we had
thought it brilliant, since the flames rose to a height of thirty
feet or more in the air.
But that which left us speechless with profound amazement was not
the endless rows of silent, grinning dwarfs, nor the black,
motionless lake, nor the leaping tongues of flame. We forgot
these when we followed the gaze of that terrifying audience and
saw a sight that printed itself on my brain with a vividness
which time can never erase.
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