And then,
from its dark and toiling surface there rose a long stream of dusky
shapes, which twined themselves about the misty trellis-work above, and
took the prominent and palpable form of human countenances, marked by
every difference of age and distorted by every variety of suffering.

There were infantine faces, wreathed about with grave-worms that hung
round them like locks of filthy hair; aged faces, dabbled with gore and
slashed with wounds; youthful faces, seamed with livid channels, along
which ran unceasing tears; lovely faces, distorted into fixed
expressions of raging pain, wild malignity, and despairing gloom. Not
one of these countenances exactly resembled the other. Each was
distinguished by a revolting character of its own. Yet, however
deformed might be their other features, the eyes of all were preserved
unimpaired. Speechless and bodiless, they floated in unceasing myriads
up to the fantastic trellis-work, which seemed to swell its wild
proportions to receive them. There they clustered, in their goblin
amphitheatre, and fixed and silently they all glared down, without one
exception, on the Pagan's face!

Meanwhile, the walls at the side began to gleam out with a light of
their own, making jagged boundaries to the midway scene of phantom
faces. Then the rifts in their surfaces widened, and disgorged
misshapen figures of priests and idols of the old time, which came
forth in every hideous deformity of aspect, mocking at the faces on the
trellis-work; while behind and over the whole, soared shapes of
gigantic darkness, robed in grim cloudy resemblances of skins such as
were worn by the Goths, and wielding through the quivering vapour,
mighty and shadow-like weapons of war. From the whole of this ghastly
assemblage there rose not the slightest sound. A stillness, as of a
dead and ruined world, possessed in all its quarters the appalling
scene. The deep echoes of the sentries' footsteps and the faint
dirging of the melancholy winds were no more. The blood that had as
yet dripped from his wound, made no sound now in the Pagan's ear; even
his own agony of terror was as silent as were the visionary demons who
had aroused it. Days, years, centuries, seemed to pass, as he lay
gazing up, in a trance of horror, into his realm of peopled and ghostly
darkness. At last nature yielded under the trial; the phantom prospect
suddenly whirled round him with fearful velocity, and his senses sought
refuge f