"The old Bogobo woman who told me of hearing the Agong insisted that she would live to hear it rung again. It is never rung except at the marriage of a chieftain or the birth of his heir. These Hillmen fairly worship it. They have the most absurd legends as to how it was cast and hung up there, and of the reasons for the wonderful tone they say it sounds. They believe that the souls of all the dead limoçons live on in it forever and that when it is sounded they all burst forth in song."
The sun exhausted its last white rays and sank below the low hills beneath them. Terry moved forward into the narrow trail and indicated to the Major that he should follow. They ascended slowly, the shelf narrowing so that by the time they had mounted twice about the base of the crag they were forced to advance by careful side steps, their backs against the cliff. Terry stopped at the fourth spiral, his hands gripping the jagged projections, his back tight against the cliff, and when the Major reached his side he nodded significantly toward the horizon.
The Major slowly withdrew his eyes from the dizzying abruptness of the fall beneath them, and followed Terry's rapt gaze. The great panorama of the Gulf lay unfolded beneath their aerie.
The sun, glowing pink against the crag, cast its huge shadow over the now tiny huts beneath them. Dusk was already falling over the great sloping forest that stretched from beneath their feet far into the Mindanao fastnesses and ended in a dim horizon where pink-blue of sky melted into the misted billows of distant hills. Far southward the Celebes was faintly outlined, a frosted mirror framed by primeval verdure, and to the east the slopes extended down mile upon mile, flattened, then leveled to edge the great sweep of the gulf.
They stood tight against the clear crest while the swift shadows gathered the Gulf into its fold. The little valleys faded, and blackened, and the lower hills disappeared. The gulf narrowed, shortened, and dissolved into the night. The dark crept swiftly up the slopes as if envious of the ruby crown set on Apo's forehead by the abdicating sun.
A steady wind, cool and fragrant with the odorous pines, streamed against them, forced their bodies hard against the crag. The Major, enraptured of the vast grandeur, voiced his exaltation.
"Jiminy!" he said. "The top of the world! An empire!—an empire of hemp! And our flag covers it all!"
Receiving no answer, he carefully pivoted his head so as to face Terry, and was humbled by what he saw. Terry's face, white in the fast fading light, was exalted, glowed like that of an esthetic of the Middle Ages, his eyes shone with a vision wider than that disclosed from the mountain top.
"Terry, what do you see—in all this?" the Major asked.
The wind whipped his words into space. He repeated, louder.