Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/230

 demon who dwells in the waters seizes his arm and draws him down, so that the blue heavens and the trees on the bank disappear, and the waves meet over his head, and darkness that grows ever deeper closes round him on every side.

From time to time, however, tongues of flame flared up around me, and a mighty noise thundered in my ears.

Finally, I found myself in what seemed to be a vast cave, where it was quite dark save for the fitful illumination furnished by the fleeting gleam of countless lightning flashes. When I had grown somewhat accustomed to the darkness, I discovered that these flashes were the reflections of iron spear-heads, which darted hither and thither as though lances were being wielded by invisible arms—it might be in a battle of ghosts. I heard screams also—not fierce and courageous, however, as those of combatants drunk with the joy of battle, but screams of pain and groans of wounded, whom, however, I did not see. For these terrifying sounds came from the background, where the quivering of the lance-heads formed one trembling and whirling mist. The foreground was empty.

In this empty space there now appeared three figures, vomited, as it were, from the black mouth of a den which opened upon it from the right. The man in the middle was Vajaçravas; his naked body trembled from head to foot as though he froze terribly or was shaken by fever. His companions had both of them human bodies which were supported upon birds' legs armed with powerful claws, and were surmounted, in the one case, by a fish's head, in the other, by a dog's. In his hands, each bore a long spear. The figure with the fish's head spoke first—

"This, Reverend Sir, is the Hell of Spears, where thou, according to the sentence of the Judge of Hell, hast to