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Nightspore felt a strong, silent throbbing of the air--a rhythmical

pulsation, in four-four time. "There is the drumming," he exclaimed.



"Do you understand it, or have you forgotten?"



"I half understand it, but I'm all confused."



"It's evident Crystalman has dug his claws into you pretty deeply,"

said Krag. "The sound comes from Muspel, but the rhythm is caused by its

travelling through Crystalman's atmosphere. His nature is rhythm as he

loves to call it--or dull, deadly repetition, as I name it."



"I remember," said Nightspore, biting his nails in the dark.



The throbbing became audible; it now sounded like a distant drum. A

small patch of strange light in the far distance, straight ahead of

them, began faintly to illuminate the floating island and the glassy sea

around it.



"Do all men escape from that ghastly world, or only I, and a few like

me?" asked Nightspore.



"If all escaped, I shouldn't sweat, my friend... There's hard work, and

anguish, and the risk of total death, waiting for us yonder."



Nightspore's heart sank. "Have I not yet finished, then?"



"If you wish it. You have got through. But will you wish it?"



The drumming grew loud and painful. The light resolved itself into a

tiny oblong of mysterious brightness in a huge wall of night. Krag's

grim and rocklike features were revealed.



"I can't face rebirth," said Nightspore. "The horror of death is nothing

to it."



"You will choose."



"I can do nothing. Crystalman is too powerful. I barely escaped with--my

own soul."



"You are still stupid with Earth fumes, and see nothing straight," said

Krag.



Nightspore made no reply, but seemed to be trying to recall something.

The water around them was so still, colourless, and transparent, that

they scarcely seemed to be borne up by liquid matter at all. Maskull's

corpse had disappeared.



The drumming was now like the clanging of iron. The oblong patch of

light grew much bigger; it burned, fierce and wild. The darkness

above, below, and on either side of it, began to shape itself into the

semblance of a huge, black wall, without bounds.



"Is that really a wall we are coming to?"



"You will soon find out. What you see is Muspel, and that light is the

gate you have to enter."



Nightspore's heart beat wildly.



"Shall I remember?" he muttered.



"Yes, you'll remember."



"Accompany me, Krag, or I shall be lost."



"There is nothing for me to do in there. I shall wait outside for you."



"You are returning to the struggle?" demanded Nightspore, gnawing his

fingertips.



"Yes."



"I dare not."



The thunderous clangor of the rhythmical beats struck on his head like

actual blows. The light glared so vividly that he was no longer able to

look at it. It had the startling irregularity of continuous lightning,

but it possessed this further peculiarity--that it seemed somehow to

give out not actual light, but emotion, seen as light. They continued to

approach the wall of darkness, straight toward the door. The glasslike

water flowed right against it, its surface reaching up almost to the

threshold.



They could not speak any more; the noise was too deafening.



In a few minutes they were before the gateway. Nightspore turned his

back and hid his eyes in his two hands, but even then he was blinded

by the light. So passionate were his feelings that his body seemed to

enlarge itself. At every frightful beat of sound, he quivered violently.



The entrance was doorless. Krag jumped onto the rocky platform and

pulled Nightspore after him.



Once through the gateway, the light vanished. The rhythmical

sound--blows totally ceased. Nightspore dropped his hands.... All was

dark and quiet as an opened tomb. But the air was filled with grim,

burning passion, which was to light and sound what light itself is to

opaque colour.



Nightspore pressed his hand to his heart. "I don't know if I can endure

it," he said, looking toward Krag. He felt his person far more vividly

and distinctly than if he had been able to see him.



"Go in, and lose no time, Nightspore.... Time here is more precious than

on earth. We can't squander the minutes. There are terrible and tragic

affairs to attend to, which won't wait for us... Go in at once. Stop for

nothing."



"Where shall I go to?" muttered Nightspore. "I have forgotten

everything."



"Enter, enter! There is only one way. You can't mistake it."



"Why do you bid me go in, if I am to come out again?"



"To have your wounds healed."



Almost before the words had left his mouth, Krag sprang back on to the

island raft. Nightspore involuntarily started after him, but at

once recovered himself and remained standing where he was. Krag was

completely invisible; everything outside was black night.



The moment he had gone, a feeling shot up in Nightspore's heart like a

thousand trumpets.



Straight in front of him, almost at his feet, was the lower end of a

steep, narrow, circular flight of stone steps. There was no other way

forward.



He put his foot on the bottom stair, at the same time peering aloft.

He saw nothing, yet as he proceeded upward every inch of the way was

perceptible to his inner feelings. The staircase was cold, dismal, and

deserted, but it seemed to him, in his exaltation of soul, like a ladder

to heaven.



After he had mounted a dozen steps or so, he paused to take breath. Each

step was increasingly difficult to ascend; he felt as though he were

carrying a heavy man on his shoulders. It struck a familiar chord in his

mind. He went on and, ten stairs higher up, came to a window set in a

high embrasure.



On to this he clambered, and looked through. The window was of a sort of

glass, but he could see nothing. Coming to him, however, from the world

outside, a disturbance of the atmosphere struck his senses, causing his

blood to run cold. At one moment it resembled a low, mocking, vulgar

laugh, travelling from the ends of the earth; at the next it was like

a rhythmical vibration of the air--the silent, continuous throbbing of

some mighty engine. The two sensations were identical, yet different.

They seemed to be related in the same manner as soul and body. After

feeling them for a long time, Nightspore got down from the embrasure,

and continued his ascent, having meanwhile grown very serious.



The climbing became still more laborious, and he was forced to stop at

every third or fourth step, to rest his muscles and regain breath. When

he had mounted another twenty stairs in this way, he came to a second

window. Again he saw nothing. The laughing disturbance of the air,

too, had ceased; but the atmospheric throb was now twice as distinct

as before, and its rhythm had become double. There were two separate

pulses; one was in the time of a march, the other in the time of a

waltz. The first was bitter and petrifying to feel, but the second was

gay, enervating, and horrible.



Nightspore spent little time at that window, for he felt that he was

on the eve of a great discovery, and that something far more important

awaited him higher up. He proceeded aloft. The ascent grew more and

more exhausting, so much so that he had frequently to sit down, utterly

crushed by his own dead weight. Still, he got to the third window.



He climbed into the embrasure. His feelings translated themselves into

vision, and he saw a sight that caused him to turn pale. A gigantic,

self-luminous sphere was hanging in the sky, occupying nearly the whole

of it. This sphere was composed entirely of two kinds of active beings.

There were a myriad of tiny green corpuscles, varying in size from the

very small to the almost indiscernible. They were not green, but he

somehow saw them so. They were all striving in one direction--toward

himself, toward Muspel, but were too feeble and miniature to make any

headway. Their action produced the marching rhythm he had previously

felt, but this rhythm was not intrinsic in the corpuscles themselves,

but was a consequence of the obstruction they met with. And, surrounding

these atoms of life and light, were far larger whirls of white light

that gyrated hither and thither, carrying the green corpuscles with

them wherever they desired. Their whirling motion was accompanied by the

waltzing rhythm. It seemed to Nightspore that the green atoms were

not only being danced about against their will but were suffering

excruciating shame and degradation in consequence. The larger ones were

steadier than the extremely small, a few were even almost stationary,

and one was advancing in the direction it wished to go.



He turned his back to the window, buried his face in his hands, and

searched in the dim recesses of his memory for an explanation of what he

had just seen. Nothing came straight, but horror and wrath began to take

possession of him.



On his way upward to the next window, invisible fingers seemed to him

to be squeezing his heart and twisting it about here and there; but he

never dreamed of turning back. His mood was so grim that he did not once

permit himself to pause. Such was his physical distress by the time that

he had clambered into the recess, that for several minutes he could see

nothing at all--the world seemed to be spinning round him rapidly.



When at last he looked, he saw the same sphere as before, but now all

was changed on it. It was a world of rocks, minerals, water, plants,

animals, and men. He saw the whole world at one view, yet everything was

so magnified that he could distinguish the smallest details of life. In

the interior of every individual, of every aggregate of individuals,

of every chemical atom, he clearly perceived the presence of the green

corpuscles. But, according to the degree of dignity of the life form,

they were fragmentary or comparatively large. In the crystal, for

example, the green, imprisoned life was so minute as to be scarcely

visible; in some men it was hardly bigger; but in other men and women it

was twenty or a hundred times greater. But, great or small, it played

an important part in every individual. It appeared as if the whirls of

white light, which were the individuals, and plainly showed themselves

beneath the enveloping bodies, were delighted with existence and wished

only to enjoy it, but the green corpuscles were in a condition of

eternal discontent, yet, blind and not knowing which way to turn for

liberation, kept changing form, as though breaking a new path, by way of

experiment. Whenever the old grotesque became metamorphosed into the

new grotesque, it was in every case the direct work of the green atoms,

trying to escape toward Muspel, but encountering immediate opposition.

These subdivided sparks of living, fiery spirit were hopelessly

imprisoned in a ghastly mush of soft pleasure. They were being

effeminated and corrupted--that is to say, absorbed in the foul, sickly

enveloping forms.



Nightspore felt a sickening shame in his soul as he looked on at that

spectacle. His exaltation had long since vanished. He bit his nails, and

understood why Krag was waiting for him below.



He mounted slowly to the fifth window. The pressure of air against him

was as strong as a full gale, divested of violence and irregularity,

so that he was not for an instant suffered to relax his efforts.

Nevertheless, not a breath stirred.



Looking through the window, he was startled by a new sight. The sphere

was still there, but between it and the Muspel-world in which he was

standing he perceived a dim, vast shadow, without any distinguishable

shape, but somehow throwing out a scent of disgusting sweetness.

Nightspore knew that it was Crystalman. A flood of fierce light--but it

was not light, but passion--was streaming all the time from Muspel to

the Shadow, and through it. When, however, it emerged on the other side,

which was the sphere, the light was altered in character. It became

split, as by a prism, into the two forms of life which he had previously

seen--the green corpuscles and the whirls. What had been fiery spirit

but a moment ago was now a disgusting mass of crawling, wriggling

individuals, each whirl of pleasure-seeking will having, as nucleus, a

fragmentary spark of living green fire. Nightspore recollected the back

rays of Starkness, and it flashed across him with the certainty of truth

that the green sparks were the back rays, and the whirls the forward

rays, of Muspel. The former were trying desperately to return to their

place of origin, but were overpowered by the brute force of the latter,

which wished only to remain where they were. The individual whirls were

jostling and fighting with, and even devouring, each other. This created

pain, but, whatever pain they felt, it was always pleasure that they

sought. Sometimes the green sparks were strong enough for a moment to

move a little way in the direction of Muspel; the whirls would then

accept the movement, not only without demur, but with pride and

pleasure, as if it were their own handiwork--but they never saw beyond

the Shadow, they thought that they were travelling toward it. The

instant the direct movement wearied them, as contrary to their whirling

nature, they fell again to killing, dancing, and loving.



Nightspore had a foreknowledge that the sixth window would prove to

be the last. Nothing would have kept him from ascending to it, for

he guessed that the nature of Crystalman himself would there become

manifest. Every step upward was like a bloody life-and-death struggle.

The stairs nailed him to the ground; the air pressure caused blood to

gush from his nose and ears; his head clanged like an iron bell. When

he had fought his way up a dozen steps, he found himself suddenly at the

top; the staircase terminated in a small, bare chamber of cold stone,

possessing a single window. On the other side of the apartment another

short flight of stairs mounted through a trap, apparently to the roof of

the building. Before ascending these stairs, Nightspore hastened to the

window and stared out.



The shadow form of Crystalman had drawn much closer to him, and filled

the whole sky, but it was not a shadow of darkness, but a bright shadow.

It had neither shape, nor colour, yet it in some way suggested the

delicate tints of early morning. It was so nebulous that the sphere

could be clearly distinguished through it; in extension, however, it

was thick. The sweet smell emanating from it was strong, loathsome,

and terrible; it seemed to spring from a sort of loose, mocking slime

inexpressibly vulgar and ignorant.



The spirit stream from Muspel flashed with complexity and variety. It

was not below individuality, but above it. It was not the One, or the

Many, but something else far beyond either. It approached Crystalman,

and entered his body--if that bright mist could be called a body. It

passed right through him, and the passage caused him the most exquisite

pleasure. The Muspel-stream was Crystalman's food. The stream emerged

from the other side on to the sphere, in a double condition. Part of

it reappeared intrinsically unaltered, but shivered into a million

fragments. These were the green corpuscles. In passing through

Crystalman they had escaped absorption by reason of their extreme

minuteness. The other part of the stream had not escaped. Its fire had

been abstracted, its cement was withdrawn, and, after being fouled

and softened by the horrible sweetness of the host, it broke into

individuals, which were the whirls of living will.



Nightspore shuddered. He comprehended at last how the whole world of

will was doomed to eternal anguish in order that one Being might feel

joy.



Presently he set foot on the final flight leading to the roof; for he

remembered vaguely that now only that remained.



Halfway up, he fainted--but when he recovered consciousness he persisted

as though nothing had happened to him. As soon as his head was above the

trap, breathing the free air, he had the same physical sensation as a

man stepping out of water. He pulled his body up, and stood expectantly

on the stone-floored roof, looking round for his first glimpse of

Muspel.



There was nothing.



He was standing upon the top of a tower, measuring not above fifteen

feet each way. Darkness was all around him. He sat down on the stone

parapet, with a sinking heart; a heavy foreboding possessed him.



Suddenly, without seeing or hearing anything, he had the distinct

impression that the darkness around him, on all four sides, was

grinning.... As soon as that happened, he understood that he was wholly

surrounded by Crystalman's world, and that Muspel consisted of himself

and the stone tower on which he was sitting..



Fire flashed in his heart.... Millions upon millions of grotesque,

vulgar, ridiculous, sweetened individuals--once Spirit--were calling out

from their degradation and agony for salvation from Muspel.... To

answer that cry there was only himself... and Krag waiting below... and

Surtur--But where was Surtur?



The truth forced itself on him in all its cold, brutal reality. Muspel

was no all-powerful Universe, tolerating from pure indifference the

existence side by side with it of another false world, which had no

right to be. Muspel was fighting for its life--against all that is most

shameful and frightful--against sin masquerading as eternal beauty,

against baseness masquerading as Nature, against the Devil masquerading

as God....



Now he understood everything. The moral combat was no mock one, no

Valhalla, where warriors are cut to pieces by day and feast by night;

but a grim death struggle in which what is worse than death--namely,

spiritual death--inevitably awaited the vanquished of Muspel.... By what

means could he hold back from this horrible war!



During those moments of anguish, all thoughts of Self--the corruption of

his life on Earth--were scorched out of Nightspore's soul, perhaps not

for the first time.



After sitting a long time, he prepared to descend. Without warning, a

strange, wailing cry swept over the face of the world. Starting in awful

mystery, it ended with such a note of low and sordid mockery that he

could not doubt for a moment whence it originated. It was the voice of

Crystalman.



Krag was waiting for him on the island raft. He threw a stern glance at

Nightspore.



"Have you seen everything?"



"The struggle is hopeless," muttered Nightspore.



"Did I not say I am the stronger?"



"You may be the stronger, but he is the mightier."



"I am the stronger and the mightier. Crystalman's Empire is but a shadow

on the face of Muspel. But nothing will be done without the bloodiest

blows.... What do you mean to do?"



Nightspore looked at him strangely. "Are you not Surtur, Krag?"



"Yes."



"Yes," said Nightspore in a slow voice, without surprise. "But what is

your name on Earth?"



"It is pain."



"That, too, I must have known."



He was silent for a few minutes; then he stepped quietly onto the raft.

Krag pushed off, and they proceeded into the darkness.