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"It were better for you to remain a stranger to the greater depth and go no farther," were the words that finally came from Blackana's scarcely moving lips. "Fulfill your mission, Blackana! I fear not the deepest depth when I am thus equipped." "Where is your sword and where is your armor?" he tauntingly asked. "My steel is hid until I find a foe worthy of its mettle."
Then Blackana uttered his final appeal with all the swing of his mighty body and the low vibrant thunder of his voice. "Back to your forts! Oh, back! ye dormant hosts around me! Not in the strength of arms, but with the subtlest webs that Hell can weave, and with the snares of silent treachery. We need no stronger weapons, and for our dress we will don sheep's clothing of the finest wool.
Why fling insults into the face of one more powerful than yourself?" "Ho, ye ten thousand!" I shouted with all my power, and Blackana fell backward at my very words. Sullen, but cowed, he arose to his feet and took me to the elevators. "Where next?" he gruffly asked. "What is on the next level below?" I inquired. "Greater proceedings than on this one.
Then did Blackana add with fiery emphasis: "Neither my master nor any of his allies will ever be put under his feet. Satan's words ran wild as he addressed the insulted hosts of Hell on this issue." Knowing that Blackana had a perfect memory, I commanded that he should reproduce Satan's address in my own dialect.
"Rest in ease, anxious mortal; she will get all necessary advice from her two friends," replied Blackana with a sardonic grin. I could no longer look into his face, for I was filled with contempt. I turned my eyes to see poor Miss Church-Member still struggling up the Hill of Remorse. When the top was finally reached I heard Mr. World congratulating her: "Well done, noble woman!
Thus was the speech suddenly ended, and I heard the unearthly reverberations of the fiendish cheering by the mighty host, while the form of Satan vanished; but from his waning shadows Blackana came forth and in death-like silence again resumed his sullen attitude at my side. The schools described. The literature of the world tainted by the teachers of darkness.
"We are now in the lowest legislative center where foul fiends invent the horrible laws of personal pollution in the mortal body, and political bribery in the civil body." Blackana held me by the hand. I seemed not to walk but rather to move along without effort, seeing the pictures of lowest life and ill-shaped spirits, some of monster size.
The great army of writers who studied in this department came from all countries of the earth. "Can it be true," thought I, "that so large a portion of our authors get at least a part of their training in the schools of the Devil?" "O Blackana!" I sighed, "how long have these things been?" "Since the beginning of literature," was his cold and brief reply.
"Oh, that I could bury in oblivion the myriad thoughts that sting me with remorse!" He paused a moment. "Am I to give you the whole speech as Fast Devil delivered it originally?" "Thought for thought, and gesture for gesture," I answered with authority. Ere the last syllable fell from my lips Blackana was suddenly transformed into a more terrifying creature than he was himself.
A lie! Can you not speak the truth?" Again he was about to rise into terrible proportions when a great hand moved the door on its hinges. Blackana, interpreting that movement better than I, continued in dread restraint. I looked again upon the Broad Highway, and saw how Mr.
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