The
grating was approached by a secret subterranean passage leading from the
front of the building, by which the sacrificing priests were enabled to
reach the dead body, to fasten weights to it, and opening the grating,
to drop it into the river, never to be beheld again by mortal eyes.
In the days when this engine of destruction was permitted to serve the
purpose for which the horrible ingenuity of its inventors had
constructed it, its principal victims were young girls. Crowned with
flowers, and clad in white garments, they were lured into immolating
themselves by being furnished with rich offerings, and told that the
sole object of their fatal expedition down the steps of the vault was to
realise the pictures adorning its walls (which we have described a few
pages back), by presenting their gifts at the shrine of the idol below.
At the period of which we write, the dragon had for many years--since
the first prohibitions of Paganism--ceased to be fed with its wonted
prey. The scales forming its body grew gradually corroded and loosened
by the damp; and when moved by the wind which penetrated to them from
beneath, whistling up in its tortuous course through the tunnel that ran
in one direction below, and the vault of the steps that ascended in
another above, produced the clashing sound which has been mentioned as
audible at intervals from the mouth of the cavity.
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