The dreadful suggestions here given, and the terrible debates that followed, beggar human description. From all parts of the great hall the busy wires were communicating with every section of the earth’s surface.
Blackana, still holding me by the hand, spoke! thus in a derisive strain:
“O mortal, now comes my glorious revenge I have tasted your insults until their galling bitterness grinds me still. I have craved for this hour when I might leave you to the mercy of the lowest, and bring you under my feet for ever.”
Then, turning to the chairman of the great assemblage, Blackana attracted his attention, and at once the attention of all the spectral monsters of the place.
“Here,” commenced he, “is a piece of mortal flesh, fresh from the surface. I have been forced, by some strange power, to conduct this mortal man through these nether levels until he has seen the workings of our underground plans and schemes. He must never see the light of day, lest the world above may know the true inwardness and source of such laws as are called cursed, and rise in hosts against our surface operations.”
At this Blackana thrust me forward, and I went straightway to the chairman who seized me by the back and held me aloft in his right hand, while a deafening roar of strident voices was measuring my doom.
“_Ho, ye ten thousand!_” I cried aloud, at which the horrid chairman fell backward, and I dropped unharmed to his own chair as the whole host were rushing at me en masse.
The chairman sprang to his feet and waved a wand. “Silence and order!” he commanded.
Thousands of brandishing weapons were brought to a stand, and quietness reigned in a moment.
“Why say you ‘ten thousand’? What power lives in those words?” asked the chairman with a show of boldness, but in secret quaking. “Power unlimited, even over death, hell, and the grave. My flesh is not food for such as these.”