After circling three
times round each of the sitter's heads, the moth flew back again into
the vessel, and the silence that ensued was followed by a soft tapping
at the window, and the appearance of something, that resembled a big
tube filled with a thick, pale blue fluid, made up of a mass of
distinct veins. This tube floated into the room, and passing close to
the three sitters, who involuntarily shrank away from it, disappeared
in the wall, behind them. A loud crack as if the branch of a tree had
broken, terminated the phenomena--the room again becoming pitch dark.
But the three sitters, although they knew there would be no further
manifestation that night, were too terrified to move. They remained
huddled together in the same spot till the morning was well advanced.
CHAPTER V
THE INITIATION
San Francisco possesses one great advantage--you can easily get out of
it. Leaving the pan-handle of the Park behind one, and following the
turn of the cars, one passes through a pretty valley, green and fair
as any garden, and dotted with small houses. An old cemetery lies to
one side of it; where unconventional inscriptions and queer epitaphs
can be traced on the half-buried stones, covered with a tangle of
vines and weeds. Still moving forward one reaches Olympus, and
climbing to its heights, one sees away below, in the far distance, the
Coast Range--like a rampart of strength; the blue waters of the bay,
sparkling and dancing in the sunlight--steamers flashing their path on
its bosom; and tiny white specks scudding in the breeze.
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