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

like a vast billow on the verge of breaking. It shut out all further view beyond. The whole crest of this hill, from one end to the other, was crowned by a long row of enormous stone posts, shining brightly in the moonlight against a background of dark sky. There were about thirty in all, and they were placed at such regular intervals that there was little doubt that they had been set there by human hands. Some were perpendicular, but others dipped so much that an aspect of extreme antiquity was given to the entire colonnade. Corpang was seen climbing the hill, not far from the top.

“He wishes to arrive,” said Maskull, watching the energetic ascent with a rather cynical smile.

“The heavens won’t open for Corpang,” returned Sullenbode. “He need not be in such a hurry.... What do these pillars seem like to you?”

“They might be the entrance to some mighty temple. Who can have planted them there?”

She did not answer. They watched Corpang gain the summit of the hill, and disappear through the line of posts.

Maskull turned again to Sullenbode. “Now we two are alone in a lonely world.”

She regarded him steadily. “Our last night on this earth must be a grand one. I am ready to go on.”

“I don’t think you are fit to go on. It will be better to go down the pass a little, and find shelter.”

She half smiled. “We won’t study our poor bodies tonight. I mean you to go to Adage, Maskull.”

“Then at all events let us rest first, for it must be a long, terrible climb, and who knows what hardships we shall meet?”

She walked a step or two forward, half turned, and held out her hand to him. “Come, Maskull!”

When they had covered half the distance that separated them from the foot of the hill, Maskull heard the drum taps. They came from behind the hill, and were loud, sharp, almost explosive. He glanced at Sullenbode, but she appeared to hear nothing. A minute later the whole sky behind and above the long chain of stone posts on the crest of the hill began to be illuminated by a strange radiance. The moonlight in that quarter faded; the posts stood out black on a background of fire. It was the light of Muspel. As the moments passed, it grew more and more vivid, peculiar, and awful. It was of no colour, and resembled nothing—it was supernatural and indescribable. Maskull’s spirit swelled. He stood fast, with expanded nostrils and terrible eyes.

Sullenbode touched him lightly.

“What do you see, Maskull?”

“Muspel-light.”

“I see nothing.”

The light shot up, until Maskull scarcely knew where he stood. It burned with a fiercer and stranger glare than ever before. He forgot the existence of Sullenbode. The drum beats grew deafeningly loud. Each beat was like a rip of startling thunder, crashing through the sky and making the air tremble. Presently the crashes coalesced, and one continuous roar of thunder rocked the world. But the rhythm persisted—the four beats, with the third accented, still came pulsing through the atmosphere, only now against a background of thunder, and not of silence.

Maskull’s heart beat wildly. His body was like a prison. He longed to throw it off, to spring up and become incorporated with the sublime universe which was beginning to unveil itself.

Sullenbode suddenly enfolded him in her arms, and kissed him—passionately, again and again. He made no response; he was unaware of what she was doing. She unclasped him and, with bent head and streaming eyes, went noiselessly away. She started to go back toward the Mornstab Pass.

A few minutes afterward the radiance began to fade. The thunder died down. The moonlight reappeared, the stone posts and the hillside were again bright. In a short time the supernatural light had entirely vanished, but the drum taps still sounded faintly, a muffled rhythm, from behind the hill. Maskull started violently, and stared around him like a suddenly awakened sleeper.

He saw Sullenbode walking slowly away from him, a few hundred yards off. At that sight, death entered his heart. He ran after her, calling out.... She did not look around. When he had lessened the distance between them by a half, he saw her suddenly stumble and fall. She did not get up again, but lay motionless where she fell.

He flew toward her, and bent over her body. His worst fears were realised. Life had departed.

Beneath its coating of mud, her face bore the vulgar, ghastly Crystalman grin, but Maskull saw nothing of it. She had never appeared so beautiful to him as at that moment.

He remained beside her for a long time, on his knees. He wept—but, between his fits of weeping, he raised his head from time to time, and listened to the distant drum beats.

An hour passed—two hours. Teargeld was now in the south-west. Maskull lifted Sullenbode’s dead body on to his shoulders, and started to walk toward the Pass. He cared no more for Muspel. He intended to look for water in which to wash the corpse of his beloved, and earth in which to bury her.

When he had reached the boulder overlooking the landslip, on which they had sat together, he lowered his burden, and, placing the dead girl on the stone, seated himself beside her for a time, gazing over toward Barey.

After that, he commenced his descent of the Mornstab Pass.