ural, and
there was a kind of light that my eyesight never saw before, red and
unsteady, and I did not see for a long time where it was coming from,
until I looked straight up, and then I seen that it came from great balls
of blood-coloured fire, that were rolling high over head with a sort of
rushing, trembling sound, and I perceived that they shone on the ribs of
a great roof of rock that was arched overhead instead of the sky. When I
seen this, scarce knowing what I did, I got up, and I said, 'I have no
right to be here; I must go,' and the man that was sitting at my left
hand, only smiled, and said, 'sit down again, you can _never_ leave this
place,' and his voice was weaker than any child's voice I ever heerd, and
when he was done speaking he smiled again. Then I spoke out very loud and
bold, and I said--'in the name of God, let me out of this bad place.' And
there was a great man, that I did not see before, sitting at the end of
the table that I was near, and he was taller than twelve men, and his
face was very proud and terrible to look at, and he stood up and
stretched out his hand before him, and when he stood up, all that was
there, great and small, bowed down with a sighing sound, and a dread came
on my heart, and he looked at me, and I could not speak. I felt I was his
own, to do what he liked with, for I knew at once who he was, and he
said, 'if you promise to return, you may depart for a season'; and the
voice he spoke with was terrible and mournful, and the echoes of it went
rolling and swelling down the endless cave, and mixing with the trembling
of the fire overhead; so that, when he sate down, there was a sound after
him, all through the place like the roaring of a furnace, and I said,
with all the strength I had, 'I promise to come back; in God's name let
me go,' and with that I lost the sight and the hearing of all that was
there, and when my senses came to me again, I was sitting in the bed with
the blood all over me, and you and the rest praying around the room."
Here he paused and wiped away the chill drops of horror which hung upon
his forehead.

I remained silent for some moments. The vision which he had just
described struck my imagination not a little, for this was long before
Vathek and the "Hall of Iblis" had delighted the world; and the
description which he gave had, as I received it, all the attractions of
novelty beside the impressiveness which always belongs to the narration
of an _eye-w