And if Chick had thought
the anteroom stupendous, he saw that a new word, one which went
beyond all previous experience, was needed to describe what he now
saw.
It was almost too immense to be grasped in its entirety. Gone was
the maze of columns; instead, far, far away to the right and to
the left, stood single rows of herculean pillars. There were but
seven on a side, separated by great distances; and between them
stretched a space so immense, so incredibly vast, that a small
city could have been housed within it. And over it all was not the
open sky, but a ceiling of such terrific grandeur that Chick
almost halted the procession while he gazed.
For that ceiling was the under side of a cloud, a grey-black,
forbidding thundercloud. And the fourteen pillars, seven on either
side, were prodigious waterspouts, monster spirals of the hue of
storm, with flaring sweeps at top and bottom that welded roof and
floor into one terrific whole. Sheer from side to side stretched
that portentous level cloud; it was a span of an epoch; and on
either side it was rooted in those awful columns, seemingly alive,
as though ready at any instant to suck up the earth into the
infinite.
By downright will-power Watson tore his attention away and
directed it upon the other features of that unprecedented
interior. It was lighted, apparently, by great windows behind the
fourteen pillars; windows too far to be distinguishable.
Pages:
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350