Up it we went also, Oros leading us, and glad was I that the stairway still ran within the substance of the rock, for I could feel the needle's mighty eye quiver in the rush of the winds which swept about its sides.
At length we saw light before us, and in another twenty steps emerged upon a platform.

As Leo, who went in front of me, walked from the stairway I saw Oros and another priest seize him by the arms, and called to him to ask what they were doing.
"Nothing," he cried back, "except that this is a dizzy place and they feared lest I should fall.

Mind how you come, Horace," and he stretched out his hand to me.
Now I was clear of the tunnel, and I believe that had it not been for that hand I should have sunk to the rocky floor, for the sight before me seemed to paralyse my brain.

Nor was this to be wondered at, for I doubt whether the world can show such another.
We stood upon the very apex of the loop, a flat space of rock about eighty yards in length by some thirty in breadth, with the star-strewn sky above us.

To the south, twenty thousand feet or more below, stretched the dim Plain of Kaloon, and to the east and west the snow-clad shoulders of the peak and the broad brown slopes beneath.
To the north was a different sight, and one more awesome.