d, without the consideration of a moment, hurled it at
a score of paces distance full into the sacred but nevertheless very
unprepossessing face before him.

At the instant when the presumptuous weapon touched the holy stone the
entire intervening space between the earth and the sky was filled with
innumerable flashes of forked and many-tongued lightning, so that the
island had the appearance of being the scene of a very extensive but
somewhat badly-arranged display of costly fireworks. At the same
time the thunder rolled among the clouds and beneath the sea in an
exceedingly disconcerting manner. At the first indication of these
celestial movements a sudden blindness came upon Yin, and all power of
thought or movement forsook him; nevertheless, he experienced an emotion
of flight through the air, as though borne upwards upon the back of a
winged creature. When this emotion ceased, the blindness went from him
as suddenly and entirely as if a cloth had been pulled away from his
eyes, and he perceived that he was held in the midst of a boundless
space, with no other object in view than the sacred rock, which had
opened, as it were, revealing a mighty throng within, at the sight of
whom Yin's internal organs trembled as they would never have moved at
ordinary danger, for it was put into his spirit that these in whose
presence he stood were the sacred Emperors of his country from the
earliest time until the usurpation of the Chinese throne by the
devouring Tartar hordes from the North.

As Yin gazed in fear-stricken amazement, a knowledge of the various Pure
Ones who composed the assembly came upon him. He understood that the
three unclad and commanding figures which stood together were the
Emperors of the Heaven, Earth, and Man, whose reigns covered a space of
more than eighty thousand years, commencing from the time when the world
began its span of existence. Next to them stood one wearing a robe of
leopard-skin, his hand resting upon a staff of a massive club, while on
his face the expression of tranquillity which marked his predecessors
had changed into one of alert wakefulness; it was the Emperor of Houses,
whose reign marked the opening of the never-ending strife between man
and all other creatures. By his side stood his successor, the Emperor of
Fire, holding in his right hand the emblem of the knotted cord, by which
he taught man to cultivate his mental faculties, while from his mouth
issued smoke and flame, signif