Page:Artabanzanus (Ferrar, 1896).djvu/24

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16
THE DEMON OF THE GREAT LAKE

rend these iron masses from their foundations, but still securely bottled up.

What scenes, what creatures, are these? Circles of brilliantly-dressed ladies and gentlemen, myriads of white-robed beings, and a host of captive mountain tigers dancing round me in the graces of youth and beauty to the splendid music of the band of the Coldstream Guards—and listen! Whose voice is that?

'Look, oh, look, Mr. Ubertus,' warbled from the summit the elder Lady of the Lake, 'at this enchanting scene ! Is it not lovely? Come up here!'

'Up there, my dear young lady! I am not a rope-dancer or a chimpanzee. I can see it from where I am.'

And lovely it certainly was. Lake Sorell, with all its charming sinuosities of island and shore, of mountain, marsh, and forest, lay spread out beneath us like a coloured map of grand proportions. Lake Crescent lay farther off, looking like a round polished mirror deeply set within a fringe of dark-green ribbons. The isthmus between the lakes came out in strong relief. A Bush fire was raging at Interlaken. The mountains and hills around us reflected the amber light of the setting sun, his golden rays softened and mellowed into the richest of ruby tints by the smoke of the distant fires.

Lured on by an insatiable desire to see whatever might be worth seeing, I rambled forth alone on another afternoon in search of this wonderful castle, and then beheld it from below. At imminent danger to neck and limbs I climbed through and over a wilderness of rocks, and stood at last at the foot of the gigantic pile, gazing upwards at its towers and battlements. It did not present a perpendicular face, as I had at first assumed, but that of a sharp, jagged cone which appeared to have been besieged and battered by heavy guns for years. And yet what was it compared to