obscurity unlighted by
moon or star.

Looking up still, but straight before him, he saw in the air, through
the hazy twilight, sword-blades already bright, gigantic blades without
hilts or handles, thinner towards the point; and these blades, standing
on end at an immense height, appeared in the gloom they cut, to be
patterned with vague intaglios or in ill-defined relief.

As he peered into space to the right and left, he was aware of a
gigantic panoply on each side at a vast height, resting on blocks of
darkness, and consisting of a colossal shield riddled with holes,
hanging above five broader swords, without hilts, but damascened on
their flat blades with indefinite designs of bewildering niello.

Little by little the tentative sun of a doubtful winter's day pierced
the fog, which vanished in blueness; the shield that hung to the left of
Durtal, the north, was the first to come to life; rosy fires and the
lurid flames of punch gleamed in its hollows, while below, in the middle
blade, there started forth in the steel-grey arch, the gigantic image of
a negress robed in green with a brown mantle. Her head, wrapped in a
blue kerchief, was set in a golden glory, and she stared out, hieratic
and wild-looking, with white, wide-open eyes.

And this engimatical Ethiop had on her knees a black infant whose eyes,
in the same way, stood out like snowballs from the dusky face.

All about her, very gradually, the other swords, still so dim, began to
glow, blood rippling from their crimsoned points as if from recent
slaughter; and this trickling red formed a setting for the shapes of
beings come, no doubt, from the distant shores of Ganges: on one side a
king playing on a golden harp; on the other a monarch wielding a sceptre
ending in the turquoise-blue petals of a fabulous lily.

Then, to the left of the royal musician there was another man, bearded,
with a walnut-stained face, the eye-sockets vacant and covered by round
spectacles; on his head were a diadem and a tiara, in his hands a
chalice and a paten, a censer and a loaf; while to the right of the
other sovereign who held the sceptre, a still more harassing shape came
forth against the blue background of the sword--a sort of oriental
brigand, escaped perhaps from the prison cells of Persepolis or Susa, a
bandit as it seemed, wearing a little scarlet cap edged with yellow, in
shape like an inverted jam-pot, and a tan-coloured gown with white
stripes on the skirt; and t