A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay (reading strategies book TXT) 📗

He then turned his attention to Nightspore, who endured his operation with grim indifference. Krag threw the knife on the floor.

An awful agony, emanating from the wound, started to run through Maskull’s body, and he began to doubt whether he would not have to faint, but it subsided almost immediately, and then he felt nothing but a gnawing ache in the injured arm, just strong enough to make life one long discomfort.

“That’s finished,” said Krag. “Now you can follow me.”

Picking up the lantern, he walked toward the door. The others hastened after him, to take advantage of the light, and a moment later their footsteps, clattering down the uncarpeted stairs, resounded through the deserted house. Krag waited till they were out, and then banged the front door after them with such violence that the windows shook.

While they were walking swiftly across to the tower, Maskull caught his arm. “I heard a voice up those stairs.”

“What did it say?”

“That I am to go, but Nightspore is to return.”

Krag smiled. “The journey is getting notorious,” he remarked, after a pause. “There must be ill-wishers about.... Well, do you want to return?”

“I don’t know what I want. But I thought the thing was curious enough to be mentioned.”

“It is not a bad thing to hear voices,” said Krag, “but you mustn’t for a minute imagine that all is wise that comes to you out of the night world.”

When they had arrived at the open gateway of the tower, he immediately set foot on the bottom step of the spiral staircase and ran nimbly up, bearing the lantern. Maskull followed him with some trepidation, in view of his previous painful experience on these stairs, but when, after the first half-dozen steps, he discovered that he was still breathing freely, his dread changed to relief and astonishment, and he could have chattered like a girl.

At the lowest window Krag went straight ahead without stopping, but Maskull clambered into the embrasure, in order to renew his acquaintance with the miraculous spectacle of the Arcturian group. The lens had lost its magic property. It had become a common sheet of glass, through which the ordinary sky field appeared.

The climb continued, and at the second and third windows he again mounted and stared out, but still the common sights presented themselves. After that, he gave up and looked through no more windows.

Krag and Nightspore meanwhile had gone on ahead with the light, so that he had to complete the ascent in darkness. When he was near the top, he saw yellow light shining through the crack of a half-opened door. His companions were standing just inside a small room, shut off from the staircase by rough wooden planking; it was rudely furnished and contained nothing of astronomical interest. The lantern was resting on a table.

Maskull walked in and looked around him with curiosity. “Are we at the top?”

“Except for the platform over our heads,” replied Krag.

“Why didn’t that lowest window magnify, as it did earlier in the evening?”

“Oh, you missed your opportunity,” said Krag, grinning. “If you had finished your climb then, you would have seen heart-expanding sights. From the fifth window, for example, you would have seen Tormance like a continent in relief; from the sixth you would have seen it like a landscape.... But now there’s no need.”

“Why not—and what has need got to do with it?”

“Things are changed, my friend, since that wound of yours. For the same reason that you have now been able to mount the stairs, there was no necessity to stop and gape at illusions en route.”

“Very well,” said Maskull, not quite understanding what he meant. “But is this Surtur’s den?”

“He has spent time here.”

“I wish you would describe this mysterious individual, Krag. We may not get another chance.”

“What I said about the windows also applies to Surtur. There’s no need to waste time over visualising him, because you are immediately going on to the reality.”

“Then let us go.” He pressed his eyeballs wearily.

“Do we strip?” asked Nightspore.

“Naturally,” answered Krag, and he began to tear off his clothes with slow, uncouth movements.

“Why?” demanded Maskull, following, however, the example of the other two men.

Krag thumped his vast chest, which was covered with thick hairs, like an ape’s. “Who knows what the Tormance fashions are like? We may sprout limbs—I don’t say we shall.”

“A-ha!” exclaimed Maskull, pausing in the middle of his undressing.

Krag smote him on the back. “New pleasure organs possible, Maskull. You like that?”

The three men stood as nature made them. Maskull’s spirits rose fast, as the moment of departure drew near.

“A farewell drink to success!” cried Krag, seizing a bottle and breaking its head off between his fingers. There were no glasses, but he poured the amber-coloured wine into some cracked cups.

Perceiving that the others drank, Maskull tossed off his cupful. It was as if he had swallowed a draught of liquid electricity.... Krag dropped onto the floor and rolled around on his back, kicking his legs in the air. He tried to drag Maskull down on top of him, and a little horseplay went on between the two. Nightspore took no part in it, but walked to and fro, like a hungry caged animal.

Suddenly, from out-of-doors, there came a single prolonged, piercing wail, such as a banshee might be imagined to utter. It ceased abruptly, and was not repeated.

“What’s that?” called out Maskull, disengaging himself impatiently from Krag.

Krag rocked with laughter. “A Scottish spirit trying to reproduce the bagpipes of its earth life—in honour of our departure.”

Nightspore turned to Krag. “Maskull will sleep throughout the journey?”

“And you too, if you wish, my altruistic friend. I am pilot, and you passengers can amuse yourselves as you please.”

“Are we off at last?” asked Maskull.

“Yes, you are about to cross your Rubicon, Maskull. But what a Rubicon!... Do you know that it takes light a hundred years or so to arrive here from Arcturus? Yet we shall do it in nineteen hours.”

“Then you assert that Surtur is already there?”

“Surtur is where he is. He is a great traveller.”

“Won’t I see him?”

Krag went up to him and looked him in the eyes. “Don’t forget that you have