Thus the long night wore away.  Our progress was very slow, but guided by occasional glimpses at the compass we never stopped but twice, once when we found ourselves apparently surrounded by tree boles and fallen boughs, and once when we got into swampy ground.  Then we took the risk of lighting the lantern, and by its aid picked our way through these difficult places.  By degrees the trees grew fewer so that we could see the stars between their tops.  This was a help to us as I knew that one of them, which I had carefully noted, shone at this season of the year directly over the cone of the mountain, and we were enabled to steer thereby.

It must have been not more than half an hour before the dawn that Hans, who was leading—­we were pushing our way through thick bushes at the time—­halted hurriedly, saying: 

“Stop, Baas, we are on the edge of a cliff.  When I thrust my stick forward it stands on nothing.”

Needless to say we pulled up dead and 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.