'Just when you think you are at the world's end, you
see a smoke from East to West as far as the eye can turn,
and then, under it, also as far as the eye can stretch,
houses and temples, shops and theatres, barracks and
granaries, trickling along like dice behind - always behind
- one long, low, rising and falling, and hiding and
showing line of towers. And that is the Wall!'
'Ah!' said the children, taking breath.
'You may well,' said Parnesius. 'Old men who have
followed the Eagles since boyhood say nothing in the
Empire is more wonderful than first sight of the Wall!'
'Is it just a Wall? Like the one round the kitchen-
garden?' said Dan.
'No, no! It is the Wall. Along the top are towers with
guard-houses, small towers, between. Even on the narrowest
part of it three men with shields can walk abreast,
from guard-house to guard-house. A little curtain wall,
no higher than a man's neck, runs along the top of the
thick wall, so that from a distance you see the helmets of
the sentries sliding back and forth like beads. Thirty feet
high is the Wall, and on the Picts' side, the North, is a
ditch, strewn with blades of old swords and spear-heads
set in wood, and tyres of wheels joined by chains.
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