“The ground is rising under us!” cried Oceaxe.
“Shall we escape?”
She made no answer, but urged the shrowk’s flight upward, at such a steep gradient that they retained their seats with difficulty. The floor of the canyon, upheaved by some mighty subterranean force, could be heard, and almost felt, coming up after them, like a gigantic landslip in the wrong direction. The cliffs cracked, and fragments began to fall. A hundred awful noises filled the air, growing louder and louder each second—splitting, hissing, cracking, grinding, booming, exploding, roaring. When they had still fifty feet or so to go, to reach the top, a sort of dark, indefinite sea of broken rocks and soil appeared under their feet, ascending rapidly, with irresistible might, accompanied by the most horrible noises. The canal was filled up for two hundred yards, before and behind them. Millions of tons of solid matter seemed to be raised. The shrowk in its ascent was caught by the uplifted debris. Beast and riders experienced in that moment all the horrors of an earthquake—they were rolled violently over, and thrown among the rocks and dirt. All was thunder, instability, motion, confusion.
Before they had time to realise their position, they were in the sunlight. The upheaval still continued. In another minute or two the valley floor had formed a new mountain, a hundred feet or more higher than the old. Then its movement ceased suddenly. Every noise stopped, as if by magic; not a rock moved. Oceaxe and Maskull picked themselves up and examined themselves for cuts and bruises. The shrowk lay on its side, panting violently, and sweating with fright.
“That was a nasty affair,” said Maskull, flicking the dirt off his person.
Oceaxe staunched a cut on her chin with a corner of her robe.
“It might have been far worse. … I mean, it’s bad enough to come up, but it’s death to go down, and that happens just as often.”
“Whatever induces you to live in such a country?”
“I don’t know, Maskull. Habit, I suppose. I have often thought of moving out of it.”
“A good deal must be forgiven you for having to spend your life in a place like this, where one is obviously never safe from one minute to another.”
“You will learn by degrees,” she answered, smiling.
She looked hard at the monster, and it got heavily to its feet.
“Get on again, Maskull!” she directed, climbing back to her perch. “We haven’t too much time to waste.”
He obeyed. They resumed their interrupted flight, this time over the mountains, and in full sunlight. Maskull settled down again to his thoughts. The peculiar atmosphere of the country continued to soak into his brain. His will became so restless and uneasy that merely to sit there in inactivity was a torture. He could scarcely endure not to be doing something.
“How secretive you are, Maskull!” said Oceaxe quietly, without turning her head.
“What secrets—what do you mean?”
“Oh, I know perfectly well what’s passing inside you. Now I think it wouldn’t be amiss to ask you—is friendship still enough?”
“Oh, don’t ask me anything,” growled Maskull. “I’ve far too many problems in my head already. I only wish I could answer some of them.”
He stared stonily at the landscape. The beast was winging its way toward a distant mountain, of singular shape. It was an enormous natural quadrilateral pyramid, rising in great terraces and terminating in a broad, flat top, on which what looked like green snow still lingered.
“What mountain is that?” he asked.
“Disscourn. The highest point in Ifdawn.”
“Are we going there?”
“Why should we go there? But if you were going on farther, it might be worth your while to pay a visit to the top. It commands the whole land as far as the Sinking Sea and Swaylone’s Island—and beyond. You can also see Alppain from it.”
“That’s a sight I mean to see before I have finished.”
“Do you, Maskull?” She turned around and put her hand on his wrist. “Stay with me, and one day we’ll go to Disscourn together.”
He grunted unintelligibly.
There were no signs of human existence in the country under their feet. While Maskull was still grimly regarding it, a large tract of forest not far ahead, bearing many trees and rocks, suddenly subsided with an awful roar and crashed down into an invisible gulf. What was solid land one minute became a clean-cut chasm the next. He jumped violently up with the shock. “This is frightful.”
Oceaxe remained unmoved.
“Why, life here must be absolutely impossible,” he went on, when he had somewhat recovered himself. “A man would need nerves of steel. … Is there no means at all of foreseeing a catastrophe like this?”
“Oh, I suppose we wouldn’t be alive if there weren’t,” replied Oceaxe, with composure. “We are more or less clever at it—but that doesn’t prevent our often getting caught.”
“You had better teach me the signs.”
“We’ll have many things to go over together. And among them, I expect, will be whether we are to stay in the land at all. … But first let us get home.”
“How far is it now?”
“It is right in front of you,” said Oceaxe, pointing with her forefinger. “You can see it.”
He followed the direction of the finger and, after a few questions, made out the spot she was indicating. It was a broad peninsula, about two miles distant. Three of its sides rose sheer out of a lake of air, the bottom of which was invisible; its fourth was a bottleneck, joining it to the mainland. It was overgrown with bright vegetation, distinct in the brilliant atmosphere. A single tall tree, shooting up in the middle of the peninsula, dwarfed everything else; it was wide and shady with sea-green leaves.
“I wonder if Crimtyphon is there,” remarked Oceaxe. “Can I see two figures, or am I mistaken?”
“I also see something,” said Maskull.
In twenty minutes they were directly above the peninsula, at a height of about
