Yet the cloud dripped honey, the color was clear and not unrestful, the chord sweet and resounding.

The pageant, fantastic, towering, red and purple lighted, passed by.  The throng upon the seats moved, rose, struck heavily with their feet, going down the narrow ways.  Many torches had been extinguished, many that were carried had gone on, following the last triumphal car.  Here were semi-darkness, great noise and confusion—­weight, too, pressing upon ground that long ago had been honeycombed; where the crypt of a three-hundred-year-old church touched through an archway old priest paths beneath a vanished temple, that in turn gave into a mixed ruin of dungeons and cellars opening at last to day or night upon a hillside at some distance from the place of raised benches.  Now, the crowd pressing thickly, the earth crust at one point trembled, cracked, gave way.  Scaffolding and throng came with groans and cries into a very cavern.  Those that were left above, high on narrow, overswaying platforms, with shouts of terror pushed back from the pit mouth, managed with accidents, injuries enough, to get to firmer earth.  Then began, among the braver sort, rescue of those who had gone down with soil and timbers.  What with the darkness and the confused and sunken ruin, this was difficult enough.

Ian and Alexander, unhurt, clambered down the standing part and by the light of congregated and improvised torches helped in that rescue, and helped strongly.  Many were pinned beneath wood, smothered by the caving earth.  The rent was wide and in places the ruin afire.  Groans, cries, appeals shook the hearts of the carnival crowd.  All would now have helped, but it was not possible for many.  There must be strength to descend into the pit and work there.

A beam pinned a man more than near a creeping flame.  The two Scots beat out that fire.  Glenfernie heaved away the beam, Ian drew out the man, badly hurt, moaning of wife and child.  Glenfernie lifted him, mounted with him, over heaped debris, by uncertain ledge and step, until other arms, outstretched, could take him.  Turning back, he took from Ian a woman’s form, lifted it forth.  Down again, the two worked on.  Others were with them, there was made a one-minded ring, folly forgot.

At last it seemed that all were rescued.  A few men only moved now in the hollow, peering here and there.  The fire had taken headway; the gulf, it was evident, would presently be filled with flame.  The heat beat back those at the rim.  “Come out!  Come out, every one!” The rescuers began to clamber forth.

Came down a roaring pile of red-lit timbers, with smoke and sparks.  It blocked the way for Alexander and Ian.  Turning, here threatened a pillar of choking murk, red-tongued.  Behind them was a gaping, narrow archway.  Involuntary recoil before that stinging push of smoke brought them in under this.  They were in a passageway, but when again they would have made forth and across to the side of the pit, and so, by climbing, out of it, they found that they could not.  Before them lay now a mere field of fire, and the blowing air drove a biting smoke against them.