This was a very peculiar and striking piece of scenery. It was like a great vast basin, or circus, in the mountains, and out of the centre of it there rose a table of rock with an ivory chair upon it. All around this the mountains went up like stairs, or theatre-seats, to a great height—except at one narrow end which was open to a view of the sea. You could imagine it a council-place or concert-hall for giants, and the rock table in the centre the stage for performers or the stand for the speaker.
“Working away with their noses against the end of the island”
We asked our guides why it was called the Whispering Rocks; and they said, “Go down into it and we will show you.”
The great bowl was miles deep and miles wide. We scrambled down the rocks and they showed us how, even when you stood far, far apart from one another, you merely had to whisper in that great place and every one in the theatre could hear you. This was, the Doctor said, on account of the echoes which played backwards and forwards between the high walls of rock.
Our guides told us that it was here, in days long gone by when the Popsipetels owned the whole of Spidermonkey Island, that the kings were crowned. The ivory chair upon the table was the throne in which they sat. And so great was the big theatre that all the Indians in the island were able to get seats in it to see the ceremony.
They showed us also an enormous hanging stone perched on the edge of a volcano’s crater—the highest summit in the whole island. Although it was very far below us, we could see it quite plainly; and it looked wobbly enough to be pushed off its perch with the hand. There was a legend among the people, they said, that when the greatest of all Popsipetel kings should be crowned in the ivory chair, this hanging stone would tumble into the volcano’s mouth and go straight down to the centre of the earth.
“The Whispering Rocks”
The Doctor said he would like to go and examine it closer.