"Well content."
"Chloran, son of Sardon, we, the ministers of the Lord Hephaistos, are but the guardians of the Gate. We know not what lieth beyond it, but thou shalt soon learn. Be it of good or of evil for thee, thine own heart mayest answer, the depths of which no man may know. I, Kalin the Priest, bid thee farewell on thy journey to a greater knowledge than is Kalin's. To the Lord Hephaistos, whose servant I am, I commend thee."
He raised his hand again, and Chloran bowed his head. One of the attendant priests came up, bearing a metal vase.
"Quaff deeply of the wine of Hephaistos," said Kalin. The man clutched the vase and drank. Almost immediately his eyes glazed, and he stood like a man of stone. Two of the priests led him to the chute and seated him on the wooden shield, binding his thighs with the thongs.
"Welcome, Chloran, to the Gateway to the Future," cried Kalin. But Chloran heard him not. The powerful drug in the wine bound his senses. His head fell forward. At a sign from Kalin the two priests shoved the shield into the chute. Down the polished way it whirled, and shot out into the fiery rift.
Polaris clung at the brink of the little ledge and strained his eyes out into the terrible, fire-shot chasm to watch the fall. With its living burden the shield whirled down through the curling vapors, straight toward the molten caldron that tossed and roared in the funnel. In a breath it had fallen so far that it looked like a toy fluttering above the flames.
Then it was gone. So intense was the heat into which it fell that it seemed to dissolve into vapor before it ever touched the surface. A long, yellow tongue of flame shot up from the surface of the lake.
Polaris turned to the ledge. The priests had extinguished the torches and disappeared. Presently Kalin came forth from his chapel and called to him. With one more glance into the depths of the sinister pit, he descended from his perch in the rock and joined the priest.
They proceeded toward the chapel.
As Polaris passed the chute he stumbled. His feet shot from under him and down on his back he fell on the polished stone, and he, too, went whizzing head first down the way that Chloran, son of Sardon, had taken into the terrible fire-pit of Hephaistos!