"I have not, of course, forgotten any of that, Bill. I have an idea, though, that those tragedies up there were purely accidental. Certainly we know that the demon's attack upon ourselves was entirely so."
"Accidental? Great Scott, some consolation that."
I looked at Milton Rhodes, and I looked at the angel, who had taken a few steps forward and was awaiting those hurrying figures—a white-clad figure, still and tall, one lovely, majestic. And, if I didn't sigh, I certainly felt like doing so.
"No demon there, Bill," observed Milton at last, his eyes upon those advancing forms.
"I see none. Four figures. I see no more than four."
"Four," nodded Rhodes. "Two men and two women."
A few moments, and they stepped out into a sort of aisle amongst the great limestone pillars. The figure in advance came to an abrupt halt. An exclamation broke from him and echoed and re-echoed eerily through the vast and gloomy cavern. It was answered by the angel, and, as her voice came murmuring back to us, it was as though fairies were hidden amongst the columns and were answering her.
But there was nothing fairylike in the aspect of that leader (who was advancing again) or his male companion. That aspect was grim, formidable. Each carried a powerful bow and had an arrow fitted to the string, and at the left side a short heavy sword. That aspect of theirs underwent a remarkable metamorphosis, however, as they came on towards us, what with the explanations that our angel gave them. When they at last halted, but a few yards from the spot where we stood, every sign of hostility had vanished. It was patent, however, that they were wary, suspicious. That they should be so was, certainly, not at all strange. But just the same there was something that made me resolve to be on my guard whatever might betide.
The leader was a tall man, of sinewy and powerful frame. Though he had, I judged, passed the half-century mark, he had suffered, it seemed, no loss of youthful vitality or strength. His companion, tall and almost as powerful as himself, was a much younger man—in his early twenties. Their hair was long. The arms were bare, as were the legs from midway the thigh to halfway below the knee, the nether extremities being incased in cothurni, light but evidently of very excellent material.
As for the companions of the twain, one was a girl of seventeen or eighteen years of age, the other a girl a couple of years older. Each had a bow and a quiver, as did our angel. Strictly speaking, it was not a quiver, for it was a quiver and bow-case combined, but what the ancients called a corytos. The older of these young ladies had golden hair, a shade lighter than the angel's, whilst the hair of the younger was as white as snow. At first I thought that it must be powdered, but this was not so. And, as I gazed with interest and wonder upon this lovely creature, I thought—of Christopher Columbus and Sir Isaac Newton. At thirty, they had hair like hers. That thought, however, was a fleeting one. This was no time, forsooth, to be thinking of old Christopher or Sir Isaac. Stranger, more wonderful was this old world of ours than even Columbus or Newton had ever dreamed it.[8]