"What art thou?" stammered Ralph, as soon as he had recovered from his surprise. "What dost thou mean by thy talk of Balaam?"
"Look, boy, and thou wilt see," answered the dark figure, which every second was becoming more clearly defined in the gloom.
Without Ralph having noticed it, the mist had been growing lighter for the last quarter of an hour. The atmosphere, while still densely thick, was yet paler and more luminous, and immediate objects were more easily distinguished.
Hardly had the strange figure spoken the words, than the vapour which enveloped them parted, and a wonderful sight presented itself to the eyes of the awe-struck boy.
Was it all a dream? or was he really standing, or floating in mid air? He could hardly repress a shudder of unutterable awe, so strange was the sudden change from the blackness of night to the brilliantly weird scene before him.
He was standing on the very verge of a fearful precipice, so close that he could peer over from the saddle down, down, far down to a rocky shore below, where the sea, in seething surf, was beating and grinding and gnawing at the black rocks scattered in wildest confusion on the strand. At his side was a vast, yawning black chasm impossible for him to fathom, shrouded as it was in the deep shadow of the bold headland beyond. Tophet itself could hardly be blacker or more fearful looking. The grim gloom of this awful abyss, at the very edge of which he was standing, made the flesh creep on his bones. One step more, and he would have plunged he knew not whither. Above this terrible place the clinging mist still veiled the scene. But Ralph could see that the hills and cliffs went soaring up till lost in obscurity.
Right from the feet of the dazed boy, but far, far down, a broad path of dancing light stretched away and away till a grey and silver cloud under the clear full moon hid it in its soft embrace, as it lay brooding over the sea.
How lovely was the dancing sea, how glorious the moon, how wondrous the violet of the deep sky of night. Ralph had never seen anything like it, and yet how near to awful death had he been.
The ghostly mist curled up over the edge of the cliff, the strange white shapes went silently floating by like ghosts of the shipwrecked dead, or a still army of spirits flying inland to visit their midnight homes. Silently as the strange scene had opened, so stilly and impalpably it faded away. In another moment all was gone, and the boy and the dark figure were alone in the thick fog, nothing visible of all that wondrous scene but themselves and the few feet of turf on which they stood. Ralph could hardly believe it was reality. Surely it must be all a dream.
"Now, my young master, believest thou? Dost understand where thou art?"