Fifteen more minutes passed in laborious climbing over rocks and fallen timber, when all at once, after ascending a slight rise to another level of the valley’s floor, we beheld the lights of a village a short distance beyond! At once Dr. Gresham changed our course to take us up the mountainside, whence we could look down upon the settlement.
To my amazement, we saw a neatly laid out town of more than a hundred houses, with electric-lighted streets. Although the houses seemed to be built entirely of corrugated sheet iron—probably because a more substantial type of construction would not have withstood the earthquakes—there was about the place an indefinable Chinese atmosphere.
My first shock of surprise at coming across this hidden city soon gave way to wonder that the outside world knew nothing of such a place—that it was not even indicated on the maps. But I recalled that on the land side it was unapproachable because of lofty mountains, beyond which lay an immense trackless wilderness; and on the water side it was a hundred miles off even the navigation lanes to Alaska.
Suddenly, as we stood there in the timber, a deep-toned bell began to toll on the summit of the low mountain above us.
“The Temple of the Moon God!” exclaimed Dr. Gresham.
With the sounding of the bell, the village awakened into life. From nearly every house came figures clad in flaming orange costumes, exactly like the ones Dr. Gresham and myself wore beneath our outer suits. At the end of the town these figures mingled and turned into a roadway, and a few moments later we saw they were coming up the hill directly toward us!
Not knowing which way they would pass, we crouched in the dark and waited.
Still the weird, mellow tocsin sounded above us—slowly, mystically, flooding the valley with somber, thrilling sound.
All at once we heard the tramping of many feet, and then perceived with alarm that the roadway up the mountainside passed not more than twenty feet from where we lay! Along it the silent, strange procession was mounting the slope!
“The Seuen-H’sin,” whispered my companion, “on their way to the hellish temple rites!”