ink
I have said somewhere of her that she reminded me of the sea
on a calm day, having the same aspect of sleeping power about
her. Well, it was all awake now, and like the face of the furious
ocean it awed and yet fascinated me. A really handsome woman
in a royal rage is always a beautiful sight, but such beauty
and such a rage I never saw combined before, and I can only say
that the effect produced was well worthy of the two.

She lifted her white face, the teeth set, and there were purple
rings beneath her glowing eyes. Thrice she tried to speak and
thrice she failed, but at last her voice came. Raising her silver
spear, she shook it, and the light gleamed from it and from the
golden scales of her cuirass.

'And thinkest thou, Nyleptha,' she said in notes which pealed
through the great hall like a clarion, 'thinkest thou that I,
Sorais, a Queen of the Zu-Vendi, will brook that this base outlander
shall sit upon my father's throne and rear up half-breeds to
fill the place of the great House of the Stairway? Never! never!
while there is life in my bosom and a man to follow me and a
spear to strike with. Who is on my side? Who?

'Now hand thou over this foreign wolf and those who came hither
to prey with him to the doom of fire, for have they not committed
the deadly sin against the sun? or, Nyleptha, I give thee War
-- red War! Ay, I say to thee that the path of thy passion shall
be marked out by the blazing of thy towns and watered with the
blood of those who cleave to thee. On thy head rest the burden
of the deed, and in thy ears ring the groans of the dying and
the cries of the widows and those who are left fatherless for
ever and for ever.

'I tell thee I will tear thee, Nyleptha, the White Queen, from
thy throne, and that thou shalt be hurled -- ay, hurled even
from the topmost stair of the great way to the foot thereof,
in that thou hast covered the name of the House of him who built
it with black shame. And I tell ye strangers -- all save Bougwan,
whom because thou didst do me a service I will save alive if
thou wilt leave these men and follow me' (here poor Good shook
his head vigorously and ejaculated 'Can't be done' in English)
-- 'that I will wrap you in sheets of gold and hang you yet alive
in chains from the four golden trumpets of the four angels that
fly east and west and north and south from the giddiest pinnacles
of the Temple, so that ye may be a token and a warning to the
land. And