sitting upon the ground, sick and deadly cold. There were the figures,
quite still and silent, seen vaguely through the thick gloom, but in
human shape indisputably.

A sudden thought occurred to me, which would have doubtless struck me at
once had I not been prepossessed with forebodings at the time that I
first saw the figures, and had not the cloud concealed them from me--I
mean that they were not living beings, but statues. I determined that I
would count fifty slowly, and was sure that the objects were not alive if
during that time I could detect no sign of motion.

How thankful was I when I came to the end of my fifty and there had been
no movement!

I counted a second time--but again all was still.

I then advanced timidly forward, and in another moment I saw that my
surmise was correct. I had come upon a sort of Stonehenge of rude and
barbaric figures, seated as Chowbok had sat when I questioned him in the
wool-shed, and with the same superhumanly malevolent expression upon
their faces. They had been all seated, but two had fallen. They were
barbarous--neither Egyptian, nor Assyrian, nor Japanese--different from
any of these, and yet akin to all. They were six or seven times larger
than life, of great antiquity, worn and lichen grown. They were ten in
number. There was snow upon their heads and wherever snow could lodge.
Each statue had been built of four or five enormous blocks, but how these
had been raised and put together is known to those alone who raised them.
Each was terrible after a different kind. One was raging furiously, as
in pain and great despair; another was lean and cadaverous with famine;
another cruel and idiotic, but with the silliest simper that can be