A fierce gust of wind shook the cypresses and holm oaks into shuddering anxiety.
"You are about to embark upon an enterprise more perilous than any man now living has ever ventured upon," spoke the cowled form. "Your soul will travel through the channels, through which the red and fiery tide rolls up when the volcano wakes. Each time it wakes the lava washes over the lost souls, which, chained to rings in the black rock, glow like living coals, but leaves them whole, to undergo their fate anew. Do you persist?"
"Give me what I desire—"
"Ay—so say they all—but to grovel in the dust before the Unknown Presence which they have defied."
"Who are you to taunt me with a fear my soul knows not?" Basil turned to the black-robed form, stretching out his hand as if to touch his mantle.
A magnetic current passed through his limbs that caused him to drop his arm with a cry of pain.
Forked lightnings leaped from one cloud-bank to another.
Distant thunder growled and died among the hills.
"I have seen the fall of Nineveh and Babylon. I was present at the destruction of the Holy City by the legions of Titus, I witnessed the burning of Rome by Nero and the fall of the temple of Serapis. I stood upon Mount Calvary under the shadow of the world's greatest tragedy."
The voice of the speaker died to silence.