The pageant, fantastic, towering, red and purple lighted, passed by.
The throng upon the seats moved, rose, struck heavily with their feet,
going down the narrow ways. Many torches had been extinguished, many
that were carried had gone on, following the last triumphal car. Here
were semi-darkness, great noise and confusion--weight, too, pressing
upon ground that long ago had been honeycombed; where the crypt of a
three-hundred-year-old church touched through an archway old priest
paths beneath a vanished temple, that in turn gave into a mixed ruin
of dungeons and cellars opening at last to day or night upon a
hillside at some distance from the place of raised benches. Now, the
crowd pressing thickly, the earth crust at one point trembled,
cracked, gave way. Scaffolding and throng came with groans and cries
into a very cavern. Those that were left above, high on narrow,
overswaying platforms, with shouts of terror pushed back from the pit
mouth, managed with accidents, injuries enough, to get to firmer
earth. Then began, among the braver sort, rescue of those who had gone
down with soil and timbers. What with the darkness and the confused
and sunken ruin, this was difficult enough.
Ian and Alexander, unhurt, clambered down the standing part and by the
light of congregated and improvised torches helped in that rescue, and
helped strongly.
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