on of the victim
amidst odorous of myrrh and frankincense. It was then that a dead
silence fell over the whispering crowd, and the priests gathering round
the cella, another priest, naked save by a cincture round the middle,
rushed forward, and dancing with wild gestures, implored an answer from
the goddess. He ceased at last in exhaustion, and a low murmuring noise
was heard within the body of the statue: thrice the head moved, and the
lips parted, and then a hollow voice uttered these mystic words:

There are waves like chargers that meet and glow,
There are graves ready wrought in the rocks below,
On the brow of the future the dangers lour,
But blest are your barks in the fearful hour.

The voice ceased--the crowd breathed more freely--the merchants looked
at each other. 'Nothing can be more plain,' murmured Diomed; 'there is
to be a storm at sea, as there very often is at the beginning of autumn,
but our vessels are to be saved. O beneficent Isis!'

'Lauded eternally be the goddess!' said the merchants: 'what can be less
equivocal than her prediction?'

Raising one hand in sign of silence to the people, for the rites of Isis
enjoined what to the lively Pompeians was an impossible suspense from
the use of the vocal organs, the chief priest poured his libation on the
altar, and after a short concluding prayer the ceremony was over, and
the congregation dismissed. Still, however, as the crowd dispersed
themselves here and there, the Egyptian lingered by the railing, and
when the space became tolerably cleared, one of the priests, approaching
it, saluted him with great appearance of friendly familiarity.

The countenance of the priest was remarkably unprepossessing--his shaven
skull was so low and narrow in the front as nearly to approach to the
conformation of that of an African savage, save only towards the
temples, where, in that organ styled acquisitiveness by the pupils of a
science modern in name, but best practically known (as their sculpture
teaches us) amongst the ancients, two huge and almost preternatural
protuberances yet more distorted the unshapely head--around the brows
the skin was puckered into a web of deep and intricate wrinkles--the
eyes, dark and small, rolled in a muddy and yellow orbit--the nose,
short yet coarse, was distended at the nostrils like a satyr's--and the
thick but pallid lips, the high cheek-bones, the livid and motley hues
that struggled through the parchment skin,