Being about three hours from dawn, in the nineteenth of Shabatu, I was awakened
               by the howl of a dog, or perhaps of a wolf, uncommonly loud and close at hand. The
               fire had died to its embers, and these red, glowing coals cast a faint, dancing shadow
               across the stone monument with the three carvings. I began to make haste to build
               another fire when, at once, the gray rock began to rise slowly into the air, as though it
               were a dove. I could not move or speak for the fear that seized upon my spine and
               wrapped cold fingers around my skull. The Dik of Azug-bel-ya was no stranger to me
               than this sight, though the former seemed to melt into my hands!
                    Presently, I heard a voice, softly, some distance away and a more practical fear,
               that of the possibility of robbers, took hold of me and I rolled behind some weeds,
               trembling. Another voice joined the first, and soon several men in the black robes of
               thieves came together over the place where I was, surrounding the floating rock, of
               which they did not exhibit the least fright.
                    I could see clearly now that the three carvings on the stone monument were
               glowing a flame red color, as though the rock were on fire. The figures were
               murmuring together in prayer or invocation, of which only a few words could be heard,
               and these in some unknown tongue; though, ANU have mercy on my soul!, these rituals
               are not unknown to me any longer.
                    The figures, whose faces I could not see or recognize, began to make wild passes
               in the air with knives that glinted cold and sharp in the mountain light.
                    From beneath the floating rock, out of the very ground where it had sat, came
               rising the tail of a serpent. This serpent was surely larger than any I had ever seen.
               The thinnest section thereof was fully that of the arms of two men, and as it rose
               from the earth it was followed by another, although the end of the first was not seen
               as it seemed to reach down into the very Pit itself.

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