e Mountain. It seemed to me that they stretched for miles, and
indeed this was so, since, although the slope was always gentle, it took
us more than an hour to climb them. At length we came to the foot of a
great stair.

"Rest awhile here, my lord," Oros said, bowing to Leo with the reverence
that he had shown him from the first, "for this stair is steep and long.
Now we stand upon the Mountain's topmost lip, and are about to climb
that tall looped column which soars above."

So we sat down in the vault-like place and let the sharp draught of air
rushing to and from the passages play upon us, for we were heated with
journeying up those close galleries. As we sat thus I heard a roaring
sound and asked Oros what it might be. He answered that we were very
near to the crater of the volcano, and that what we heard through the
thickness of the rock was the rushing of its everlasting fires. Then the
ascent commenced.

It was not dangerous though very wearisome, for there were nearly six
hundred of those steps. The climb of the passages had reminded me of
that of the gallery of the Great Pyramid drawn out for whole furlongs;
that of the pillar was like the ascent of a cathedral spire, or rather
of several spires piled one upon another.

Resting from time to time, we dragged ourselves up the steep steps, each
of them quite a foot in height, till the pillar was climbed and only the
loop remained. Up it we went also, Oros leading us, and glad was I that
the stairway still ran within the substance of the rock, for I could
feel the needle's mighty eye quiver in the rush of the winds which swept
about its sides.

At length we saw light before us, and in another twenty steps emerged
upon a platform. As Leo, who went in front of me, walked from the
stairway I saw Oros and another priest seize him by the arms, and called
to him to ask what they were doing.

"Nothing," he cried back, "except that this is a dizzy place and they
feared lest I should fall. Mind how you come, Horace," and he stretched
out his hand to me.

Now I was clear of the tunnel, and I believe that had it not been for
that hand I should have sunk to the rocky floor, for the sight before me
seemed to paralyse my brain. Nor was this to be wondered at, for I doubt
whether the world can show such another.

We stood upon the very apex of the loop, a flat space of rock about
eighty yards in length by some thirty in breadth, with the star-strewn
sky above us. To the