Читать книгу The Perfect World. A romance of strange people and strange places онлайн

69 страница из 96

It was a huge temple into which he had been brought—so vast that he was unable to see the further end of it. An enormous high altar stood near him, and at intervals were smaller ones all round the walls. Statues and images, both grotesque and beautiful, ornamented the place, and the atmosphere reeked with a pungent incense that was sickly and overpowering. But it was not only the vastness and weirdness that left Alan breathless—it was a wonder more terrible, more awe-inspiring than his mind had ever conceived.

The whole of the centre of the temple was composed of a fire—a fire that ran down the length of the elliptically shaped building, and disappeared in the distance in a red glow. A glass-like wall rose to perhaps three feet above the level of the flames, and through it Alan could see into the heart of a bottomless pit of fire, whose flames of all hues danced and swerved and shimmered in a wild ecstasy. The substance of the fire he could not guess—but the fire possessed a terrifying appearance that alone was enough to break the spirit of any mortal man.