Leaving the shack they threaded through the tiers of huts and crossed through the fringe of trees that surrounded the village, coming out at the foot of the cone. The huge monolith rose some eight hundred feet above the tableland on which the village was built. Its symmetrical slopes were smooth and steep. A goat could not have found footing anywhere upon its precipitous sides.
A winding shelf had been cut out of the rock to serve as a trail. It wound round the cone a dozen times in an ascent of several hundred feet where it terminated, high above where they stood, in a niche twenty feet square. Niche and trail had been chipped out of solid rock and were worn smooth by the rains of many years. Here and there the smooth surface was checkered with fissures, marks of erosion and earthquake.
The Major, head bent far back, breathed deeply:
"Sus-marie-hosep!" he exclaimed.
High above the spot where they stood a granite arm had been carved over the rock platform in which the winding trail ended, and from this arm a mammoth bronze agong hung suspended over them.
"Why, I always thought those stories of the Giant Agong were just—why, how in thunder did they get it up there? And how did they cast it? Why—Sus-marie-hosep!"
The Major gazed up till the muscles at the back of his neck ached: "Why, it must be fifteen feet in diameter—that striking knob is—why, the thing must weigh six or seven tons!"
With this last thought the Major moved uneasily to one side. Terry grinned at him.
"I felt that same way when I first stood under it, but I've been up there. That flimsy-looking arm on which it hangs is two feet thick and chiseled out of solid granite to form a bracket. I think you are right about its size—the striking knob in the center is about six inches wide."
The Major shook his head, still bewildered: "Terry, I feel as if this is all a dream—being up here on Apo, this cold air, the smell of the pines, and now this thing here—Sus-marie-hosep!"