An awful place it always is; and Elsley saw it at an awful time, as the glare unveiled below him a sea of rock-waves, all sharp on edge, pointing toward him on every side:  or rather one wave-crest of a sea; for twenty yards beyond, all sloped away into the abysmal dark.

Terrible were those rocks below; and ten times more terrible as seen through the lurid glow of his distempered brain.  All the weird peaks and slabs seemed pointing up at him:  sharp-toothed jaws gaped upward—­ tongues hissed upward—­arms pointed upward—­hounds leaped upward—­ monstrous snake-heads peered upward out of cracks and caves.  Did he not see them move, writhe? or was it the ever-shifting light of the flashes?  Did he not hear them howl, yell at him? or was it but the wind, tortured in their labyrinthine caverns?

The next moment, and all was dark again; but the images which had been called up remained, and fastened on his brain, and grew there; and when, in the light of the next flash, the scene returned, he could see the red lips of the phantom hounds, the bright eyes of the phantom snakes; the tongues wagged in mockery; the hands brandished great stones to hurl at him; the mountain-top was instinct with fiendish life,—­a very Blocksberg of all hideous shapes and sins.

And yet he did not shrink.  Horrible it was; he was going mad before it.  And yet he took a strange and fierce delight in making it more horrible; in maddening himself yet more and more; in clothing those fantastic stones with every fancy which could inspire another man with dread.  But he had no dread.  Perfect rage, like perfect love, casts out fear.  He rejoiced in his own misery, in his own danger.  His life hung on a thread; any instant might hurl him from that cairn, a blackened corpse.

What better end?  Let it come!  He was Prometheus on the peak of Caucasus, hurling defiance at the unjust Jove!  His hopes, his love, his very honour—­curse it!—­ruined!  Let the lightning stroke come!  He were a coward to shrink from it.  Let him face the worst, unprotected, bare-headed, naked, and do battle, himself, and nothing but himself, against the universe!  And, as men at such moments will do, in the mad desire to free the self-tortured spirit from some unseen and choking bond, he began wildly tearing off his clothes.

But merciful nature brought relief, and stopped him in his mad efforts, or he had been a frozen corpse long ere the dawn.  His hands, stiff with cold, refused to obey him; as he delayed he was saved.  After the paroxysm came the collapse; he sank upon the top of the cairn half senseless.  He felt himself falling over its edge; and the animal instinct of self-preservation, unconsciously to him, made him slide down gently, till he sank into a crack between two rocks, sheltered somewhat, as it befell happily, from the lashing of the rain.

Another minute, and he slept a dreamless sleep.