wings,--birds
dislodged from the forest on fire, and screaming, in dissonant terror,
as they flew towards the farthermost mountains; close by my feet hissed
and glided the snakes, driven forth from their blazing coverts, and
glancing through the ring, unscared by its waning lamps; all undulating
by me, bright-eyed and hissing, all made innocuous by fear,--even the
terrible Death-adder, which I trampled on as I halted at the verge of
the circle, did not turn to bite, but crept harmless away. I halted at
the gap between the two dead lamps, and bowed my head to look again into
the crystal vessel. Were there, indeed, no lingering drops yet left,
if but to recruit the lamps for some priceless minutes more? As I thus
stood, right into the gap between the two dead lamps strode a gigantic
Foot. All the rest of the form was unseen; only, as volume after volume
of smoke poured on from the burning land behind, it seemed as if one
great column of vapour, eddying round, settled itself aloft from the
circle, and that out from that column strode the giant Foot. And, as
strode the Foot, so with it came, like the sound of its tread, a roll of
muttered thunder.

I recoiled, with a cry that rang loud through the lurid air.

"Courage!" said the voice of Ayesha. "Trembling soul, yield not an inch
to the demon!"

At the charm, the wonderful charm, in the tone of the Veiled Woman's
voice, my will seemed to take a force more sublime than its own.
I folded my arms on my breast, and stood as if rooted to the spot,
confronting the column of smoke and the stride of the giant Foot. And
the Foot halted, mute.

Again, in the momentary hush of that suspense, I heard a voice,--it was
Margrave's.

"The last hour expires, the work is accomplished! Come! come! Aid me to
take the caldron from the fire; and quick!--or a drop may be wasted in
vapour--the Elixir of Life from the caldron!"

At that cry I receded, and the Foot advanced.

And at that moment, suddenly, unawares, from behind, I was stricken
down. Over me, as I lay, swept a whirlwind of trampling hoofs and
glancing horns. The herds, in their flight from the burning pastures,
had rushed over the bed of the watercourse, scaled the slopes of the
banks. Snorting and bellowing, they plunged their blind way to the
mountains. One cry alone, more wild than their own savage blare, pierced
the reek through which the Brute Hurricane swept. At that cry of wrath
and despair I struggled to rise, again