Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/83

 Above the howl of the storm I could distinctly hear strange sounds proceeding apparently from that part of the tower which lay above us. Musical sounds—a voice singing, or rather chanting a strain so weird and dismal that it made my very blood run cold.

“Mirrikh, by all that’s holy!” ejaculated the Doctor. “The fakir has kept his word! He said that we should have a visit from him to-night.”

“Listen! listen!” breathed Maurice, raising his hand. “Could anything be grander, more solemn, more entirely in harmony with our strange surroundings?”

We listened breathlessly; even Philpot seemed to experience the influence of that wild, mournful strain which echoed down from the obscurity above us, reminding me  most forcibly of the opening measures of the “Wolfschlticht”  in Der Freischütz, being a series of prolonged shakes in a  minor key, with an occasional break into melody, followed  by an instant return to the shake again.

Suddenly this ceased and a moment of stillness followed, and then began a movement of a wholly different sort.

“Gad!” broke in the Doctor; “the top of the tower must be filled with people! No one voice could produce such sounds as those.”

“Hark! Hark!” whispered Maurice. “Was anything ever so heavenly, so divine!”

Now I am not much of a musician. I perform on no instrument nor do I sing, but I love music and in my time have attended operas and philharmonics sufficient to know something of what is what, and I can truthfully affirm that no more remarkable performance was ever heard by the ears of mortal man.

Beginning in low, sweet, sympathetic strains, which re-reminded me of the opening of the Larghetto in the Second Symphony, it rose by a gentle crescendo until it seemed to fill the whole of that gloomy interior, then falling again into melody which stirred the inmost depths of my soul.

Now the motive became more strident, and rising above the thunder which was again cracking outside, there came a succession of sounds harmonizing with the fury of the elements to a degree fairly enchanting, It was not one voice, but many; it could not have been produced otherwise, I was reflecting, when suddenly the chorus ceased, and but one