"In my home - whatever that is. Gangnet is a common thief.""You are speaking in riddles, and I don't understand you. I don't know either of you, but it's clear that if Gangnet is a poet, you're a buffoon. Must you go on talking? I want to be quiet."Krag laughed, but said no more. Presently he lay down at full length, with his face to the sun, and in a few minutes was fast asleep, and snoring disagreeably. Maskull kept glancing over at his yellow, repulsive face with strong disfavour.
Two hours passed. The land on either side was more than a mile distant. In front of them there was no land at all. Behind them, the Lichstorm Mountains were blotted out from view by a haze that had gathered together. The sky ahead, just above the horizon, began to be of a strange colour. It was an intense jale-blue. The whole northern atmosphere was stained with ulfire.
Maskull's mind grew disturbed. "Alppain is rising, Gangnet."Gangnet smiled wistfully. "It begins to trouble you?""It is so solemn - tragical, almost - yet it recalls me to Earth.
Life was no longer important - but this is important.""Daylight is night to this other daylight. Within half an hour you will be like a man who has stepped from a dark forest into the open day. Then you will ask yourself how you could have been blind."The two men went on watching the blue sunrise. The entire sky in the north, halfway up to the zenith, was streaked with extraordinary colours, among which jale and dolm predominated. Just as the principal character of an ordinary dawn is mystery, the outstanding character of this dawn was wildness. It did not baffle the understanding, but the heart. Maskull felt no inarticulate craving to seize and perpetuate the sunrise, and make it his own. Instead of that, it agitated and tormented him, like the opening bars of a supernatural symphony.
When he looked back to the south, Branchspell's day had lost its glare, and he could gaze at the immense white sun without flinching.
He instinctively turned to the north again, as one turns from darkness to light.
"If those were Crystalman's thoughts that you showed me before, Gangnet, these must be his feelings. I mean it literally. What I am feeling now, he must have felt before me.""He is all feeling, Maskull - don't you understand that?"Maskull was feeding greedily on the spectacle before him; he did not reply. His face was set like a rock, but his eyes were dim with the beginning of tears. The sky blazed deeper and deeper; it was obvious that Alppain was about to lift itself above the sea. The island had by this time floated past the mouth of the estuary. On three sides they were surrounded by water. The haze crept up behind them and shut out all sight of land. Krag was still sleeping - an ugly, wrinkled monstrosity.
Maskull looked over the side at the flowing water. It had lost its dark green colour, and was now of a perfect crystal transparency.
"Are we already on the Ocean, Gangnet?"
"Yes."
"Then nothing remains except my death."
"Don't think of death, but life."
"It's growing brighter - at the same time, more sombre, Krag seems to be fading away. - ..""There is Alppain!" said Gangnet, touching his arm.
The deep, glowing disk of the blue sun peeped above the sea. Maskull was struck to silence. He was hardly so much looking, as feeling.
His emotions were unutterable. His soul seemed too strong for his body. The great blue orb rose rapidly out of the water, like an awful eye watching him.... it shot above the sea with a bound, and Alppain's day commenced.
"What do you feel?" Gangnet still held his arm.
"I have set myself against the Infinite," muttered Maskull.
