grayed, their outlines grew misty. They ceased their climbing. They writhed—
They faded out!
Where they had been hovered three wisps of stained cloud. The wisps dissolved.
In their place were three great drops of gold.
Sluggishly the three globules began to roll down the Face. They drew together. They became one. This dribbled slowly down to the crawling golden stream; was merged with it; was carried to the lip of the abyss—
Over into the gulf.
From high over that gulf came a burst of the elfin horns, a rush of unseen wings. And now, in the strange light of that cavern, Graydon saw them. Their bodies were serpents, silver scaled. They were winged. They dipped and drifted and eddied before the Face on snowy pinions, like those of ghostly birds of paradise.
Large and small, some the size of the great python, some no longer than the asp, they whirled and coiled and spun through the sparkling air, trumpeting triumphantly, calling to each other with their voices like elfin horns, fencing joyously with each other with bills that were like thin, straight swords.
Winged serpents, paradise-plumed, whose bills were sharp rapiers. Winged serpents sending forth their pæans of fairy trumpets while that crawling stream of which Soames—Dancret—Starrett—were now a part dripped, dripped, slowly, so slowly, down into the abyss.
Graydon dropped upon the step, sick in every nerve and fiber of his being. He crept past the edge of the rock curtain, out of the brilliancy of the diamonded light, out of the sight of the Face and out of hearing of the trumpet-clamor of the flying serpents.
He saw Suarra, running to him.
And consciousness left him.
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