Thus it came about that in attempting to show off we had committed sacrilege of a most aggravated nature.
When our guide had finished his tale, the old man with the long beard and round cap, whose appearance I have already described, and who was, as I have said, the High Priest of the country, and known by the name of Agon, rose and commenced an impassioned harangue.

I did not like the look of his cold grey eye as he fixed it on us.

I should have liked it still less had I known that in the name of the outraged majesty of his god he was demanding that the whole lot of us should be offered up as a sacrifice by means of being burnt alive.
After he had finished speaking the Queen Sorais addressed him in a soft and musical voice, and appeared, to judge from his gestures of dissent, to be putting the other side of the question before him.

Then Nyleptha spoke in liquid accents.

Little did we know that she was pleading for our lives.