But why, in going, did the thought come to me that from where the Three sat throned they ever watched the cavern mouth that was the door into their abode; and looked down ever into the unfathomable depth in which glowed and pulsed that mystic flower, colossal, awesome, of green flame that had seemed to me fire of life itself?
CHAPTER XXVI
The Wooing of Lakla
I had slept soundly and dreamlessly; I wakened quietly in the great chamber into which Rador had ushered O'Keefe and myself after that culminating experience of crowded, nerve-racking hours—the facing of the Three.
Now, lying gazing upward at the high-vaulted ceiling, I heard Larry's voice:
"They look like birds." Evidently he was thinking of the Three; a silence—then: "Yes, they look like birds—and they look, and it's meaning no disrespect to them I am at all, they look like lizards"—and another silence—"they look like some sort of gods, and, by the good sword-arm of Brian Boru, they look human, too! And it's none of them they are either, so what—what the—what the sainted St. Bridget are they?" Another short silence, and then in a tone of awed and absolute conviction: "That's it, sure! That's what they are—it all hangs in—they couldn't be anything else—"
He gave a whoop; a pillow shot over and caught me across the head.
"Wake up!" shouted Larry. "Wake up, ye seething caldron of fossilized superstitions! Wake up, ye bogy-haunted man of scientific unwisdom!"
Under pillow and insults I bounced to my feet, filled for a moment with quite real wrath; he lay back, roaring with laughter, and my anger was swept away.