These twelve giant lamps (each one about ten feet high) were arranged in a kind of crown, the diameter of which must have been about fifty feet.  In the center of this circle was a dark mass, all streaked with trembling red reflections.  When I drew nearer, I saw it was a bubbling fountain.  It was the freshness of this water which had maintained the temperature of which I have spoken.

Huge seats were cut in the central rock from which gushed the murmuring, shadowy fountain.  They were heaped with silky cushions.  Twelve incense burners, within the circle of red lamps, formed a second crown, half as large in diameter.  Their smoke mounted toward the vault, invisible in the darkness, but their perfume, combined with the coolness and sound of the water, banished from the soul all other desire than to remain there forever.

M. Le Mesge made us sit down in the center of the hall, on the Cyclopean seats.  He seated himself between us.

“In a few minutes,” he said, “your eyes will grow accustomed to the obscurity.”

I noticed that he spoke in a hushed voice, as if he were in church.

Little by little, our eyes did indeed grow used to the red light.  Only the lower part of the great hall was illuminated.  The whole vault was drowned in shadow and its height was impossible to estimate.  Vaguely, I could perceive overhead a great smooth gold chandelier, flecked, like everything else, with sombre red reflections.  But there was no means of judging the length of the chain by which it hung from the dark ceiling.

The marble of the pavement was of so high a polish, that the great torches were reflected even there.

This room, I repeat, was round a perfect circle of which the fountain at our backs was the center.

We sat facing the curving walls.  Before long, we began to be able to see them.  They were of peculiar construction, divided into a series of niches, broken, ahead of us, by the door which had just opened to give us passage, behind us, by a second door, a still darker hole which I divined in the darkness when I turned around.  From one door to the other, I counted sixty niches, making, in all, one hundred and twenty.  Each was about ten feet high.  Each contained a kind of case, larger above than below, closed only at the lower end.  In all these cases, except two just opposite me, I thought I could discern a brilliant shape, a human shape certainly, something like a statue of very pale bronze.  In the arc of the circle before me, I counted clearly thirty of these strange statues.

What were these statues?  I wanted to see.  I rose.

M. Le Mesge put his hand on my arm.

“In good time,” he murmured in the same low voice, “all in good time.”

The Professor was watching the door by which we had entered the hall, and from behind which we could hear the sound of footsteps becoming more and more distinct.

It opened quietly to admit three Tuareg slaves.  Two of them were carrying a long package on their shoulders; the third seemed to be their chief.