so remained without stirring
an inch, for who could say what might be beyond us? Ragnall wished to
examine the ground with the lantern. I was about to consent, though
doubtfully, when suddenly I heard voices murmuring and through the
screen of bushes saw lights moving at a little distance, forty feet or
more below us. Then we gave up all idea of making further use of the
lantern and crouched still as mice in our bushes, waiting for the dawn.

It came at last. In the east appeared a faint pearly flush that by
degrees spread itself over the whole arch of the sky and was welcomed
by the barking of monkeys and the call of birds in the depths of the
dew-steeped forest. Next a ray from the unrisen sun, a single spear
of light shot suddenly across the sky, and as it appeared, from the
darkness below us arose a sound of chanting, very low and sweet to hear.
It died away and for a little while there was silence broken only by
a rustling sound like to that of people taking their seats in a dark
theatre. Then a woman began to sing in a beautiful, contralto voice,
but in what language I do not know, for I could not catch the words, if
these were words and not only musical notes.

I felt Ragnall trembling beside me and in a whisper asked him what was
the matter. He answered, also in a whisper:

"I believe that is my wife's voice."

"If so, I beg you to control yourself," I replied.

Now the skies began to flame and the light to pour itself into a misty
hollow beneath us like streams of many-coloured gems into a bowl,
driving away the shadows. By degrees these vanished; by degrees we saw
everything. Beneath us was an amphitheatre, on the southern wall of
which we were seated, though it was not a wall but a lava cliff between
forty and fifty feet high which served as a wall. The amphitheatre
itself, however, almost exactly resembled those of the ancients which
I had seen in pictures and Ragnall had visited in Italy, Greece, and
Southern France. It was oval in shape and not very large, perhaps the
flat space at the bottom may have covered something over an acre, but
all round this oval ran tiers of seats cut in the lava of the crater.
For without doubt this was the crater of an extinct volcano.

Moreover, in what I will call the arena, stood a temple that in its main
outlines, although small, exactly resembled those still to be seen in
Egypt. There was the gateway or pylon; there the open outer court with
columns round it suppor