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| Down the lanes to the temple men are streaming,
calling to one another out of the darkness, mustering in the temple-court.
Already the circles are forming, one within another, five or six circles
of crouching bodies, a hundred and fifty men under the flickering
light of a great branching wooden torch. All sounds die away, there
is silence and a feeling of suspense. Suddenly the motionless bodies
grow tense, awaiting a signal. With a series of short cries they lift
themselves, then sink with a hissing sound of outgoing breath. They
intone a rhythm, menacing, intense, all exactly together; then drop
and muffle it, press it down into the dark hole between their crowded
heads. They begin to sway; low inarticulate sounds break from them;
their bodies gleam in the flickering flame, their eyes half close
in dreaming faces. A slow chant rises from a single voice in their
midst, a child's high-pitched wailing voice. The swaying grows and
grows till suddenly the heaving mass bursts open with a roar, like
a crater in eruption scattering fragments. Circle upon circle they
fall backwards, the full-blown flower of a volcano. Again they fold
together and continue their swaying and their song. Mysterious voices
rise from one point and another, indefinable. The circles heave as
if possessed by the demon voices which seem at once amongst them and
far away. For a moment a single spectral voice winds into the night,
a solitary sound struggles to escape, but is overwhelmed by the relentless
march of common sound. |
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