"What a place!" he ejaculated.
We stepped cautiously to the brink of the ledge and peered over. Underneath us, with the vertical wall of the cliff running directly down into it, spread a small pool of some heavy, viscous fluid, inky black, and with iridescent colors floating upon its surface. It bubbled and boiled lazily, and we could feel its heat on our faces plainly.
Beyond the pool, not more than a hundred yards across, lay a mass of ragged bowlders piled together in inextricable confusion; beyond these a chasm with steam rising from it, whose bottom I could not see—a crack as though the ground had suddenly cooled and split apart. Across the entire surface of this little cliff‑bound circular valley it was the same, as though here a tortured nature had undergone some terrible agony in the birth of this world.
The scene, which indeed had something infernal about it, would have been extraordinary enough by itself; but what made it even more so was the fact that several hundred girls were perched among these crags, sitting idle, or standing up and flapping their wings like giant birds, and more were momentarily swooping in from above. I had, for an instant, the feeling that I was Dante, surveying the lower regions, and that here was a host of angels from heaven invading them.
During the next hour fully a thousand girls arrived. There were perhaps fifteen hundred altogether, and only a few stragglers were hastily flying in when we decided to wait no longer.
Miela flew out around the little valley, calling them to come closer. They came flying toward us and crowded upon the nearer crags just beyond the pool, clutching the precipitous sides, and scrambling for a foothold wherever they could. A hundred or more found place on the ledge with us, or above or below it wherever a slight footing could be found on the wall of the cliff.
When they were all settled, and the scrambling and flapping of wings had ceased, Miela stood up and addressed them. A solemn, almost sinister hush lay over the valley, and her voice carried far. She spoke hardly above the ordinary tone, earnestly, and occasionally with considerable emphasis, as though to drive home some important point.
For nearly half an hour she spoke without a break, then she called me to her side and put one of her wings caressingly about my shoulders. I did not know what she said, but a great wave of handclapping and flapping of wings answered her. She turned to me with glowing face.
"I have told them about your wonderful earth, and Tao's evil plans; and just now I said that you were my husband—and I, a wife, can still fly as well as they. That is a very wonderful thing, Alan. No woman ever, in this world, has been so blessed as I. They realize that—and they respect me and love you for it."
She did not wait for me to speak, but again addressed the assembled girls. When she paused a chorus of shouts answered her. Many of the girls in their enthusiasm lost their uncertain footholds and fluttered about, seeking others. For a moment there was confusion.