When the smoke of the rifles cleared away the fiend had vanished from the cliff, and the crimson light had died away. The silvery beams of the moon played hide and seek among the projections and depressions of the cliff’s peak.
The gazers rubbed their eyes. What they had seen appeared to them already like a fantastic dream. But a new vision awaited them, a new wonder was to be presented to their eyes.
Another light began to glow from the cliff, but this time it was of a bluish tint, and the smoke that arose from it was white and fleecy. And this light grew dense, as the other had done, and assumed a form and shape—a shape of ethereal loveliness.
As the other vision thrilled the beholders with a kind of supernatural awe, so did this one excite their wondering admiration. It bore the shape they supposed an angel would wear.
The face was that of a girl, angelic in its beauty. Her long black hair floated in wavy masses upon her neck and shoulders, and was confined upon the forehead by a golden coronet in the center of which gleamed a diamond star, which emitted scintillating rays of light. Her arms and legs were bare, revealing their faultless perfection, and the alabaster purity of her skin. Her only garment was a long white tunic, of some snowy, fleecy fabric, confined at the waist by a golden cestus, which was studded with large rubies glittering with blood-red rays.
This angelic vision held in her right hand a kind of glittering dart. For a minute she transfixed their wondering gaze, then hurled the dart into their midst.
The fire around her grew more vivid, the volume of white smoke increased in density, obscured her figure from view, and then began to roll away. When the light of the fire faded and the smoke lifted from the face of the rock, the platform was vacant, the lovely vision had disappeared.
The surveying party gaze inquiringly into each other’s faces. Lieutenant Gardiner expressed the general opinion by asking the hunter, Glyndon:
“What do you think of that?”
Glyndon shook his head dubiously.