south, twenty thousand feet or more below,
stretched the dim Plain of Kaloon, and to the east and west the
snow-clad shoulders of the peak and the broad brown slopes beneath.
To the north was a different sight, and one more awesome. There, right
under us as it seemed, for the pillar bent inwards, lay the vast crater
of the volcano, and in the centre of it a wide lake of fire that broke
into bubbles and flowers of sudden flame or spouted, writhed and twisted
like an angry sea.

From the surface of this lake rose smoke and gases that took fire as
they floated upwards, and, mingling together, formed a gigantic sheet of
living light. Right opposite to us burned this sheet and, the flare of
it passing through the needle-eye of the pillar under us, sped away in
one dazzling beam across the country of Kaloon, across the mountains
beyond, till it was lost on the horizon.

The wind blew from south to north, being sucked in towards the hot
crater of the volcano, and its fierce breath, that screamed through the
eye of the pillar and against its rugged surface, bent the long crest
of the sheet of flame, as an ocean roller is bent over by the gale, and
tore from it fragments of fire, that floated away to leeward like the
blown-out sails of a burning ship.

Had it not been for this strong and steady wind indeed, no creature
could have lived upon the pillar, for the vapours would have poisoned
him; but its unceasing blast drove these all away towards the north. For
the same reason, in the thin air of that icy place the heat was not too
great to be endured.

Appalled by that terrific spectacle, which seemed more appropriate to
the terrors of the Pit than to this earth of ours, and fearful lest the
blast should whirl me like a dead leaf into the glowing gulf beneath, I
fell on to my sound hand and my knees, shouting to Leo to do likewise,
and looked about me. Now I observed lines of priests wrapped in great
capes, kneeling upon the face of the rock and engaged apparently in
prayer, but of Hes the Mother, or of Atene, or of the corpse of the dead
Khan I could see nothing.

Whilst I wondered where they might be, Oros, upon whose nerves this
dread scene appeared to have no effect, and some of our attendant
priests surrounded us and led us onwards by a path that ran perilously
near to the rounded edge of the rock. A few downward steps and we found
that we were under shelter, for the gale was roaring over us. Twenty
more paces and we