ir voices were lost in the outburst of instruments sounding
simultaneously to drown the cries of the victims. The eight-stringed
scheminiths, the kinnors which had ten strings, and the nebals which
had twelve, grated, whistled, and thundered. Enormous leathern bags,
bristling with pipes, made a shrill clashing noise; the tabourines,
beaten with all the players' might, resounded with heavy, rapid blows;
and, in spite of the fury of the clarions, the salsalim snapped like
grasshoppers' wings.

The hierodules, with a long hook, opened the seven-storied compartments
on the body of the Baal. They put meal into the highest, two
turtle-doves into the second, an ape into the third, a ram into the
fourth, a sheep into the fifth, and as no ox was to be had for the
sixth, a tawny hide taken from the sanctuary was thrown into it. The
seventh compartment yawned empty still.

Before undertaking anything it was well to make trial of the arms of the
god. Slender chainlets stretched from his fingers up to his shoulders
and fell behind, where men by pulling them made the two hands rise to a
level with the elbows, and come close together against the belly; they
were moved several times in succession with little abrupt jerks. Then
the instruments were still. The fire roared.

The pontiffs of Moloch walked about on the great flagstone scanning the
multitude.

An individual sacrifice was necessary, a perfectly voluntary oblation,
which was considered as carrying the others along with it. But no one
had appeared up to the present, and the seven passages leading from the
barriers to the colossus were completely empty. Then the priests, to
encourage the people, drew bodkins from their girdles and gashed their
faces. The Devotees, who were stretched on the ground outside, were
brought within the enclosure. A bundle of horrible irons was thrown to
them, and each chose his own torture. They drove in spits between their
breasts; they split their cheeks; they put crowns of thorns upon their
heads; then they twined their arms together, and surrounded the children
in another large circle which widened and contracted in turns. They
reached to the balustrade, they threw themselves back again, and then
began once more, attracting the crowd to them by the dizziness of their
motion with its accompanying blood and shrieks.

By degrees people came into the end of the passages; they flung into
the flames pearls, gold vases, cups, torches, all their wealt