MARGRAVE threw himself on a seat just under the great anaconda; I closed and locked the door. When I had done so, my eye fell on the young man’s face, and I was surprised to see that it had lost its colour; that it showed great anxiety, great distress; that his hands were visibly trembling.
“What is this?” he said in feeble tones, and raising himself half from his seat as if with great effort. “Help me up! come away! Something in this room is hostile to me, hostile, overpowering! What can it be?”
“Truth and my presence,” answered a stern, low voice; and Sir Philip Derval, whose slight form the huge bulk of the dead elephant had before obscured from my view, came suddenly out from the shadow into the full rays of the lamps which lit up, as if for Man’s revel, that mocking catacomb for the playmates of Nature which he enslaves for his service or slays for his sport. As Sir Philip spoke and advanced, Margrave sank back into his seat, shrinking, collapsing, nerveless; terror the most abject expressed in his staring eyes and parted lips. On the other hand, the simple dignity of Sir Philip Derval’s bearing, and the mild power of his countenance, were alike inconceivably heightened. A change had come over the whole man, the more impressive because wholly undefinable.
Halting opposite Margrave he uttered some words in a language unknown to me, and stretched one hand over the young man’s head. Margrave at once became stiff and rigid, as if turned to stone. Sir Philip said to me,—
“Place one of those lamps on the floor,—there, by his feet.”
I took down one of the coloured lamps from the mimic tree round which the huge anaconda coiled its spires, and placed it as I was told.
“Take the seat opposite to him, and watch.”
I obeyed.
Meanwhile, Sir Philip had drawn from his breast-pocket a small steel casket, and I observed, as he opened it, that the interior was subdivided into several compartments, each with its separate lid; from one of these he took and sprinkled over the flame of the lamp a few grains of a powder, colourless and sparkling as diamond dust. In a second or so, a delicate perfume, wholly unfamiliar to my sense, rose from the lamp.
“You would test the condition of trance; test it, and in the spirit.”