Maskull immediately climbed down, and dropped himself into the boat; but then he received a surprise. The moment he stood on the frail bottom, still clinging to the rock, not only did his weight entirely disappear, as though he were floating in some heavy medium, like salt water, but the rock he held onto drew him, as by a mild current of electricity, and he was able to withdraw his hands only with difficulty.
After the first moment’s shock, he quietly accepted the new order of things, and set about shifting the carcass. Since there was no weight in the boat this was effected without any great labour. Corpang then descended. The astonishing physical change had no power to disturb his settled composure, which was founded on moral ideas. Haunte came last; grasping the staff which held the upper male stone, he proceeded to erect it, after removing the cap. Maskull then obtained his first near view of the mysterious light, which, by counteracting the forces of Nature, acted indirectly not only as elevator but as motive force. In the last ruddy gleams of the great sun, its rays were obscured, and it looked little more impressive than an extremely brilliant, scintillating blue-white jewel, but its power could be gauged by the visible, coloured mist that it threw out for many yards around.
The steering was effected by means of a shutter attached by a cord to the top of the staff, which could be so manipulated that any segment of the male stone’s rays, or all the rays, or none at all, could be shut off at will. No sooner was the staff raised than the aerial vessel quietly detached itself from the rock to which it had been drawn, and passed slowly forward in the direction of the mountains. Branchspell sank below the horizon. The gathering mist blotted out everything outside a radius of a few miles. The air grew cool and fresh.
Soon the rock masses ceased on the great, rising plain. Haunte withdrew the shutter entirely, and the boat gathered full speed.
“You say that navigation among the mountains is difficult at night,” exclaimed Maskull. “I would have thought it impossible.”
Haunte grunted. “You will have to take risks, and think yourself fortunate if you come off with nothing worse than a cracked skull. But one thing I can tell you—if you go on disturbing me with your chitchat we shan’t get as far as the mountains.”
Thereafter Maskull was silent.
The twilight deepened; the murk grew denser. There was little to look at, but much to feel. The motion of the boat, which was due to the never-ending struggle between the male stones and the force of gravitation, resembled in an exaggerated fashion the violent tossing of a small craft on a choppy sea. The two passengers became unhappy. Haunte, from his seat in the stern, gazed at them sardonically with one eye. The darkness now came on rapidly.
About ninety minutes after the commencement of the voyage they arrived at the foothills of Lichstorm. They began to mount. There was no daylight left to see by. Beneath them, however, on both sides of them and in the rear, the landscape was lighted up for a considerable distance by the now vivid blue rays of the twin male stones. Ahead, where these rays did not shine, Haunte was guided by the self-luminous nature of the rocks, grass, and trees. These were faintly phosphorescent; the vegetation shone out more strongly than the soil.
The moon was not shining and there were no stars; Maskull therefore inferred that the upper atmosphere was dense with mist. Once or twice, from his sensations of choking, he thought that they were entering a fogbank, but it was a strange kind of fog, for it had the effect of doubling the intensity of every light in front of them. Whenever this happened, nightmare feelings attacked him; he experienced transitory, unreasoning fright and horror.
Now they passed high above the valley that separated the foothills from the mountains themselves. The boat began an ascent of many thousands of feet and, as the cliffs were near, Haunte had to manoeuvre carefully with the rear light in order to keep clear of them. Maskull watched the delicacy of his movements, not without admiration. A long time went by. It grew much colder; the air was damp and drafty. The fog began to deposit something like snow on their persons. Maskull kept sweating with terror, not because of the danger they were in, but because of the cloud banks that continued to envelop them.
They cleared the first line of precipices. Still mounting, but this time with a forward motion, as could be seen by the vapours illuminated by the male stones through which they passed, they were soon altogether out of sight of solid ground. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly the moon broke through. In the upper atmosphere thick masses of fog were seen crawling hither and thither, broken in many places by thin rifts of sky, through one of which Teargeld was shining. Below them, to their left, a gigantic peak, glittering with green ice, showed itself for a few seconds, and was then swallowed up again. All the rest of the world was hidden by the mist. The moon went in again. Maskull had seen quite enough to make him long for the aerial voyage to end.
The light from the male stones presently illuminated the face of a new cliff. It was grand, rugged, and perpendicular. Upward, downward, and on both sides, it faded imperceptibly into the night. After coasting it a little way, they observed a shelf of rock jutting out. It was square, measuring about a dozen feet each way. Green snow covered it to a depth of some inches. Immediately behind it was a dark slit in the rock, which promised to be the mouth of a cave.
Haunte skilfully landed the boat on this platform.
