If a moorhen or duck chanced to rub the reed, and but one drop stuck to its feathers, it forthwith died.

Of the red water he had not heard, nor of the black, into which he had unwittingly sailed.
Ghastly beings haunted the site of so many crimes, shapeless monsters, hovering by night, and weaving a fearful dance.

Frequently they caught fire, as it seemed, and burned as they flew or floated in the air.
Remembering these stories, which in part, at least, now seemed to be true, Felix glanced aside, where the cloud still kept pace with him, and involuntarily put his hands to his ears lest the darkness of the air should whisper some horror of old times.

The earth on which he walked, the black earth, leaving phosphoric footmarks behind him, was composed of the mouldered bodies of millions of men who had passed away in the centuries during which the city existed.

He shuddered as he moved; he hastened, yet could not go fast, his numbed limbs would not permit him.
He dreaded lest he should fall and sleep, and wake no more, like the searchers after treasure; treasure which they had found only to lose for ever.