Having surmounted my first impulse of awe, I watched these proceedings, curious yet disdainful, as one who watches the mummeries of an enchanter on the stage.

“If,” thought I, “these are but artful devices to inebriate and fool my own imagination, my imagination is on its guard, and reason shall not, this time, sleep at her post!”

“And now,” said Margrave, “I consign to you the easy task by which you are to merit your share of the elixir.  It is my task to feed and replenish the caldron; it is Ayesha’s to feed the fire, which must not for a moment relax in its measured and steady heat.  Your task is the lightest of all:  it is but to renew from this vessel the fluid that burns in the lamps, and on the ring.  Observe, the contents of the vessel must be thriftily husbanded; there is enough, but not more than enough, to sustain the light in the lamps, on the lines traced round the caldron, and on the farther ring, for six hours.  The compounds dissolved in this fluid are scarce—­only obtainable in the East, and even in the East months might have passed before I could have increased my supply.  I had no months to waste.  Replenish, then, the light only when it begins to flicker or fade.  Take heed, above all, that no part of the outer ring—­no, not an inch—­and no lamp of the twelve, that are to its zodiac like stars, fade for one moment in darkness.”

I took the crystal vessel from his hand.

“The vessel is small,” said I, “and what is yet left of its contents is but scanty; whether its drops suffice to replenish the lights I cannot guess—­I can but obey your instructions.  But, more important by far than the light to the lamps and the circle, which in Asia or Africa might scare away the wild beasts unknown to this land—­more important than light to a lamp is the strength to your frame, weak magician!  What will support you through six weary hours of night watch?”

“Hope,” answered Margrave, with a ray of his old dazzling style.  “Hope!  I shall live—­I shall live through the centuries!”

VIII

One hour passed away; the fagots under the caldron burned clear in the sullen, sultry air.  The materials within began to seethe, and their color, at first dull and turbid, changed into a pale-rose hue; from time to time the Veiled Woman replenished the fire, after she had done so reseating herself close by the pyre, with her head bowed over her knees, and her face hid under her veil.

The lights in the lamps and along the ring and the triangles now began to pale.  I resupplied their nutriment from the crystal vessel.  As yet nothing strange startled my eye or my ear beyond the rim of the circle—­nothing audible, save, at a distance, the musical wheel-like click of the locusts, and, farther still, in the forest, the howl of the wild dogs that never bark; nothing visible, but the trees and the mountain range girding the plains silvered by the moon, and the arch of the cavern, the flush of wild blooms on its sides, and the gleam of dry bones on its floor, where the moonlight shot into the gloom.