I determined to try it.

I cannot bear to think of you at the sacrifice--and for love of me meeting your death--for I would die to save you, Atam-or." I pressed her closer in my arms.
"Oh, Almah," said I, "I would die to save you! and if this ceremony will save you I will go through with it, and accept my fate whatever it may be." We were now interrupted.
The women--the hags of horror--the shriek-like ones, as I may call them, or the fiend-like, the female fiends, the foul ones--they were all around us; and one there was who looked so exactly like the nightmare hag of the outer sea that I felt sure she must be the same, who by some strange chance had come here.

Such, indeed, is quite likely, for there may have been a pass over the mountains to the land of the Kosekin; and those savage cannibals may all have been honored Kosekin exiles, dwelling in poverty, want, woe, and darkness, all of which may have been allotted to them as a reward for eminent virtues.
And so here she was, the nightmare hag, and I saw that she recognized me.
A circle was now formed around us, and the light stood in the middle.
The nightmare hag also stood within the circle on the other side of the light opposite us.

The beams of the lamp flickered through the darkness, faintly illuminating the faces of the horrible creatures around, who, foul and repulsive as harpies, seemed like unclean beasts, ready to make us their prey.

Their glances seemed to menace death; their blear eyes rested upon us with a horrid eager hunger.