* * * * * * * Whither should he go! ... Down into the blazing area of the fast- perishing Temple? Surely no safety could be found there, where the fire was raging at its utmost height! ... yet he went on mechanically, as though urged forward by some force superior to his own, . . always clinging to the idea that his friend still lived and that if he could only reach some place of temporary shelter he might yet be able to restore him. It was possible the wound was not fatal, . . far more possible to his mind than that so gloriously famed a Poet should be dead!
So he dimly thought, while he stumbled dizzily along, . . his forehead wet with clammy dews, . . his limbs trembling under the weight he bore, . . his eyes half-blinded by the hot flying sparks and drifting smoke, . . and his soul shaken and appalled by the ghastly sights that met his view wheresoever he turned. Crushed and writhing bodies of men, women, and children, half-living, half-dead, . . heaps of corpses, fast blazing to ashes,--broken and falling columns, . . yawning gaps in the ground, from which were cast forth volleys of red cinders and streams of lava, ... all these multitudinous horrors surrounded him, as with uncertain, faltering steps he moved on like a sick man walking in sleep, carrying his precious burden! He knew nothing of where he was bound,--he saw no outlet anywhere--no corner wherein the Fire- fiend had not set up devouring dominion, . . but nevertheless he steadily continued his difficult progress, clasping Sah-luma's corpse with a strange tenacity, and concentrating all his attention on protecting it from the withering touch of the ravenous flames. All at once,--as he strove to force his way over a fallen altar from which the hideous presiding stone idol had toppled headlong, killing in its descent some twenty or thirty people whose bodies lay crushed beneath it,--a face horribly disfigured and tortured into a mere burnt sketch of its former likeness twisted itself up and peered at him, the face of Zabastes, the Critic. His protruding eyes glistened with something of their old malign expression as he perceived whose helpless form it was that was being carried by.
"What! ... is the famous Sah-luma gone?" he gasped, his words half choking him in their utterance as he stretched out a skinny hand and caught at Theos's garments ... "Good youth, stay! ... Stay! ... Why burden thyself with a corpse when thou mightest rescue a living man? Save ME! ... Save ME! ... I was the Poet's adverse Critic, and who but I should write his Eulogy now that he is no more! ... Pity! ... Pity, most courteous, gentle sir! ... Save me if only for the sake of Sah-luma's future honor! Thou knowest not how warmly, how generously, how nobly, I can praise the dead!"