e electric machine itself, a battery of Leyden
jars was hidden under the altar and connected by a piece of clockwork
with that opening covered with metal in which the crucifix had been
planted.

Black Mask stood silently for a moment on the basement of the altar
after removing his helmet from his head, and those who stood nearest
were horrified to observe that single hairs of his long flowing mane of
hair rose slowly and remained stiffly suspended in the air. There was a
deep silence, the silence that prevails under the earth--among the Dead.

And now Fatia Negra began to recite the words of the oath in a solemn
ghostly voice: "I, the bearer of the Black Mask, Fatia Negra, as they
call me, swear in the subterranean midnight by the living fire which
falling like rain reduced Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes; by the flood
which killed all the dwellers upon earth; by the gaping gulf which
swallowed up the traitorous bands of Dathan and Abiram; by the spirit
which announced the death of King Saul; by the Angel Lucifer who by
reason of his rebellion was cast down from Heaven; by the angel Malach
Hamovesh who carries in his hands the sword of violent death; by the
twelve plagues of Egypt with which Moses visited the land of the
Pharaohs; by all these things and by the star under which I was born do
I swear secresy--and may I perish in fire and water, may I be buried
alive in the bowels of the earth, may I become a pillar of salt, may the
wild beast of the forest tear me to pieces, may my own weapon turn
against me in the evil hour, may I be terrified by midnight spectres and
hag-ridden, may my body be smitten with leprosy, my eyes with blindness,
my tongue with dumbness, my bones by rottenness, if ever I speak one
syllable to anybody, be it priest, or child, or father, or condemning
judge, or threatening headsman, of anything I have seen, heard or learnt
in this place, or write it down with my hand or put anybody on the track
of it! May every drop of my blood become curse-laden; may my remotest
posterity anathematize me; may I awake in my grave and go about again as
a spectre, if ever I act in anyway contrary to what I now swear! May all
those who are under the earth and above the earth be the witnesses of
this my oath!"

This drastic formula satisfied everybody. In those parts the people much
prefer such unmeaning self-objurgation to our legal oaths as taken in
the presence of the judges and they are considered a hundred times