Читать книгу The City of the Sacred Well онлайн

56 страница из 66

“For days I had been traveling, first by train, then by volan,—that satanic contrivance which leaves one bruised and bumped from head to foot,—and finally in the saddle, dozing over the head of a somnambulant horse.

“Even the witchery of the moonlight could not long hold alert my fatigued body and mind. On and on we plodded, hour after hour. Midnight passed and how many more hours I do not know, when I heard an exclamation in the vernacular, from my guide. Startled out of a half-conscious dream I came erect in the saddle.

“My Indian was earnestly pointing up and ahead. I raised my eyes and became electrically, tinglingly awake. There, high up, wraith-like in the waning moonlight, loomed what seemed a Grecian temple of colossal proportions, atop a great steep hill. So massive did it seem in the half-light of the approaching morning that I could think of it only as an impregnable fortress high above the sea, on some rocky, wave-dashed promontory. As this mass took clearer shape before me with each succeeding hoof-beat of my weary steed, it grew more and more huge. I felt an actual physical pain, as if my heart skipped a few beats and then raced to make up the loss.