The Bronze Bell

by Louis Joseph Vance

Amber sunk his teeth into his lower lip and subdued an almost uncontrollable impulse to scream and fling the thing away; for his sense of touch told him that the hand was dead. And yet he became sensible that it was tugging at his own, and he yielded to its persuasion, permitting himself to be led on for so long a journey that his fingers clasping the little hand grew numb with cold ere it was over. He could by no means say whither he was being conducted, but was conscious of a long, gradual descent. Many times he swept his free arm out round him, but touched nothing.

Abruptly the guiding hand was twisted away. He stopped incontinently, and possessed himself with what patience he could muster throughout another long wait tempered by strange sibilant whisperings and rustlings in the void all about him.

Without any forewarning two heavy hands gripped him, one on either shoulder, and he was forced to his knees. At the same instant, with a snapping crackle a spurt of blue flame shot down from the zenith, and where it fell with a thunderclap a dazzling glare of emerald light shot up breasthigh.

To his half-blinded eyes it seemed, for a time, to dance suspended in the air before him. A vapour swirled up from it, a thin cloud, luminous. By degrees he made out its source, a small, brazen bowl on a tripod.

A confusion of hushed voices swelled as had the sound of that mighty, rushing, impalpable wind, and died more slowly.

Conscious that his features were in strong light, he strove to exhibit an impassiveness that belied his temper; then glancing round beneath lowered eyelids he sought to determine something of the nature of his surroundings, but could see little. The hands had left his shoulders the minute his knees touched the floor; he knelt utterly alone in the middle of what seemed to be a vast hall, or cavern, of which the size was but faintly suggested. As his eyes became accustomed to the chiaroscuro he became aware of monstrous images of stone that appeared to advance from and retreat to the far walls on either hand as the green light flared and fell, and of a great silent and motionless concourse of people grouped about the massive pedestals—a crowd as contained and impassive as the gods that towered above its heads, blending into the gloom that shrouded the high roof of the place.

In front of him he could see nothing beyond the noiselessly wavering flame. But presently a hand appeared, as if by magic, above the bowl—a hand, bony, brown, and long of finger, that seemed attached to nothing—and cast something like a powder into the fire. There followed a fizz and puff of vapour, and a strong and heady gust of incense was wafted into Amber's face. Again and again the hand appeared, sprinkling powder in the brazier, until the smoke clouded the atmosphere with its fluent, eddying coils.

The gooseflesh that had pricked out on Amber's skin subsided, and his qualms went with it. "Greek fire burning in a bowl," he explained the phenomenon; "and a native with his arm wrapped to the wrist in black is feeding it. Not a bad effect, though."

It was, perhaps, as well that he had not been deceived, for there was a horror to come that required all his strength to face. He became conscious that something was moving between him and the brazier—something which he had incuriously assumed to be a piece of dirty cloth left there carelessly. But now he saw it stir, squirm, and upend, unfolding itself and lifting its head to the leaping flame: an immense cobra, sleek and white as ivory, its swelling hood as large as a man's two hands, with a binocular mark on it as yellow as topaz, and with vicious eyes glowing like twin rubies in its vile little head.

Amber's breath clicked in his throat and he shrank back, rising; but this instinctive move had been provided against and before his knees were fairly off the rocky floor he was forced down again by the hands on his shoulders. He was unable to take his eyes from the monster, and though terror such as man is heir to lay cold upon his heart, he did not again attempt to stir.