Once in a while, there were low exchanges of unfamiliar words, though sometimes he could nor be sure whether they were sounds of intelligent conversation he heard, or rather the hypnotic drone of distant insects. The ring of the men of Leng held thus for some hours, apparently in the performance of some spiritual exercise.
Looking about him at what little the soft hazy light revealed, Harker was taken aback to notice what looked like a shadowy dais off to one end of the low but vast chamber. Atop this structure, which seemed imperceptibly to merge with an outcropping of stalagmites rising from the natural stone floor, there sprawled a shifting heap of living matter. Upon this figure Harker tried now to focus, hoping that as his eyes adjusted to the gloom he might be able to scrutinize the form more clearly.
All at once he became aware of a low sussuration that had only just broached his threshold of hearing while very gradually increasing in volume. The monks were chanting. The illumination began to grow the least bit brighter, though nowhere could Harker spy anyone adding fuel to the many small lamps or otherwise adjusting the light.
No matter; at least a better glimpse of the figure on the throne had become possible. Still his head mildly ached with the frustrated effort to put some familiar construal upon what his eyes reported. For the shape shrouded in luxuriant layers of yellow silk seemed amorphous. He had once or twice seen individuals with thyroid conditions that made them dangerously obese, women from whose limbs sagging pouches of redundant flesh depended. In these cases the conventional lineaments of the human body had become obscured like an ancient fossil encased in mud. But this comparison only began to hint at the appearance of the Hooded Thing before him. Three great bell-like funnels of lemon-yellow silk veiled thick and stumpy protrusions, presumably a head and two arms, though no recognizable flesh was visible. There were strange ... shiftings among the folds of the massive cassock that Harker found himself wishing the shadow still hid.
The chanting died away as quickly as it had begun. Now Harker felt that the still-unseen visages awaited some word from him. Sooner or later he would have to speak, else why had he come among these strange heathen people at all? So he up and spoke, knowing that in no case could his audience possibly know his language, but trusting in the promise of scripture that the Holy Ghost should fill the mouth of the one who preached the gospel. "My friends, you whose lives, like mine, are given unto spiritual things; I have journeyed far to bring you glad ridings of great joy. For unto you has come this day a Savior, who is Chr—"
"Ta tvam asi!" came back a voice, as if to punctuate his words. He knew from his seminary studies in Comparative Religion the meaning of this phrase. It was a famous quote from the Hindu Upanishads. It meant “That, thou art" and referred to the identity of the individual self with the divine Brahman. Did one of those present mean to refute his preaching with a counter-gospel? Or had the Spirit made them understand his English syllables, even as God had translated for the multitude at Pentecost so that each heard the gospel in his own native language? Did they indeed understand him? If so, what was the sense of the Hindu formula?
He had barely a moment to ask himself these questions before he felt a spiritual onrush such as he had not felt since that first night in the storefront temple. His tongue and vocal cords were no longer his own as he yielded to the impulse of the Spirit. He blanked his conscious volition and uttered forth the glossolalic syllables: Pnglui ngah Cthulhu fhtagn!
In a moment all the figures seated about him were bowing and prostrating themselves before him, or at least that was what he thought. Given the confusing body shapes and motions, he could not be sure what they were doing, but it seemed like obeisance more than anything else. He had been merely the mouthpiece for his God, no more than a messenger handing over the sealed message. It was not for him to know what words the message contained. But he thought and hoped he had somehow prophesied the glad tidings of salvation, and that his audience had found themselves cut to the quick even as Simon Peter's hearers at Pentecost. He would soon find it was not so simple as that, but whatever he had said, it had certainly met with their approval, and their attitude toward him was henceforth of the most positive and even reverential.
The Reverend Harker had made his apostolic journey to distant Leng to plant the banner of the gospel where it had never flown before. He had come to teach, and yet henceforth he found himself playing the role of learner. His mysterious hosts made that much clear, providing him with scrolls and block-print codices in great numbers.
He had, as I have said, already picked up a smattering of the central Asian languages required to make his way into the remote hinterlands, but this proved a meager basis on which to plod through lengthy and turgid volumes of metaphysics and yogic disciplines. Once or twice the monks of Leng managed to secure the temporary services of Nepalese or Chinese outsiders who might facilitate the missionary’s progress in learning, but nothing was systematic.
Nonetheless, after many clays (it later turned out to have been years!), Harker found he could understand something of the spoken language of the men of Leng—less than one might expect given the time spent among them, for it was a strange whistling, buzzing, even grinding sound hard for a Westerner to understand or reproduce. The written languages, particularly the proto-Naacal, were easier to grasp.
These studies supplied the key to a vast repository of ancient and esoteric learning. Dr. Harker was soon amazed at the wealth of lore that slept in the vast subterranean libraries of the monastery. Heathen lore it might be, but he was nor such a boor as to scoff at the gathered wisdom of a civilization ancient when his own ancestors were still huddling in caves. Some of what he read betrayed fairly close kinship with certain Hindu-Buddhist doctrines just then becoming more widely known in the West through Max Müller’s Sacred Books of the East translation library. Others held surprising parallels to the familiar doctrines and commandments of his own faith.
THE turning point came, the light dawned, when at length he was presented with a very ancient parchment which, as his widening eyes deciphered line upon line, purported to be a contemporary account of the apprenticeship of Jesus of Nazareth among the adepts of Leng. Here appeared to be the answer to the long-standing riddle of the "lost" years of Jesus between his youth and his baptism in the Jordan. Everything the bemused Harker had learned up to now, no matter how outré, had not really touched him personally. This ... this struck at the heart of his faith.
Yet was it a threat to his belief? Or a supplement? Was it possible that he might be on the verge of discovering a new, or long-forgotten, dimension of the gospel? Was this why he had been so strangely drawn to the virtually unknown frontier of Leng? Was he preaching the gospel to these people? Or were they preaching it to him? It did not take him long to resolve that providence had vouchsafed him a unique opportunity to learn, and that he had best take full advantage of it.
They brought him more scrolls, more scriptures, which he devoured with a newly stoked spiritual hunger. He mastered the Upa-Puranas almost effortlessly now, and the Black Sutra of the legendary avatar U Pao opened its secrets to him. The Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup remained stubbornly mute to him no longer.