And here it was that as a Christian man I stopped my ears. For I come of honest yeoman stock, and God forbid that I should so much as listen to such foul mouthings.
That the devils the witch called were there, I doubted not, for as I have said, even as the words passed her lips, the blue vapor from the cauldron took shape, and I saw floating therein all those whom she had named. But more was still to come. For presently my own image was joined to theirs and was swept with them into a kind of evil dance. Faster and faster the vapor figures whirled. There was despair and envy, and wrath and sorrow and dismay, on the swift revolving faces. I could not turn my eyes away, and my heart was as water in my breast.
Then on a sudden the lips of the hag ceased to move, and like drifted smoke the vision passed.
I would have cried aloud in wrath against such practices, but the sound died in my throat.
Then Hubla spoke, but not to me.
She had risen, and now stood before the hideous image of the Serpent god, and in one hand she held a slender iron rod whose end was white hot, and whose middle part glowed red from the flames.
“False and perjured god!” I heard her cry, and the tones struck ice to my breast, so full were they of malice and of rage. “Between me and thee is the struggle yet to come. Think not that Hubla fears thee. Take this, and this, in token of thy shame and thy defeat.”
And as she spoke she smote with all her force, with the rod, the stolid squatting figure.
Drops of foam fell from the witch’s lips, and again her shrill voice rang through the cavern.
“I have shielded thine enemy. Out of the toils of thy priests I have delivered him. Lo! he shall live, and the blast of thy anger shall not smite him. Neither shall thy breath consume him. For I have thrown my mantle about him, and he shall live to mock thee in thy courts.”