A Voyage to Arcturus, David Lindsay [guided reading books TXT] 📗

the drum beats, but, unlike the latter, it did not seem to proceed from any particular quarter of the forest. It resembled the subjective music heard in dreams, which accompanies the dreamer everywhere, as a sort of natural atmosphere, rendering all his experiences emotional. It seemed to issue from an unearthly orchestra, and was strongly troubled, pathetic and tragic. Maskull marched, and listened; and as he listened, it grew louder and stormier. But the pulse of the drum interpenetrated all the other sounds, like the quiet beating of reality.

His emotion deepened. He could not have said if minutes or hours were passing. The spectral procession marched on, a little way ahead, on a path parallel with his own and Dreamsinter’s. The music pulsated violently. Krag lifted his arm, and displayed a long, murderous-looking knife. He sprang forward and, raising it over the phantom Maskull’s back, stabbed him twice, leaving the knife in the wound the second time. Maskull threw up his arms, and fell down dead. Krag leaped into the forest and vanished from sight. Nightspore marched on alone, stern and unmoved.

The music rose to crescendo. The whole dim, gigantic forest was roaring with sound. The tones came from all sides, from above, from the ground under their feet. It was so grandly passionate that Maskull felt his soul loosening from its bodily envelope.

He continued to follow Nightspore. A strange brightness began to glow in front of them. It was not daylight, but a radiance such as he had never seen before, and such as he could not have imagined to be possible. Nightspore moved straight toward it. Maskull felt his chest bursting. The light flashed higher. The awful harmonies of the music followed hard one upon another, like the waves of a wild, magic ocean.⁠ ⁠… His body was incapable of enduring such shocks, and all of a sudden he tumbled over in a faint that resembled death.

XIV Polecrab

The morning slowly passed. Maskull made some convulsive movements, and opened his eyes. He sat up, blinking. All was night-like and silent in the forest. The strange light had gone, the music had ceased, Dreamsinter had vanished. He fingered his beard, clotted with Tydomin’s blood, and fell into a deep muse.

“According to Panawe and Catice, this forest contains wise men. Perhaps Dreamsinter was one. Perhaps that vision I have just seen was a specimen of his wisdom. It looked almost like an answer to my question.⁠ ⁠… I ought not to have asked about myself, but about Surtur. Then I would have got a different answer. I might have learned something⁠ ⁠… I might have seen him.”

He remained quiet and apathetic for a bit.

“But I couldn’t face that awful glare,” he proceeded. “It was bursting my body. He warned me, too. And so Surtur does really exist, and my journey stands for something. But why am I here, and what can I do? Who is Surtur? Where is he to be found?”

Something wild came into his eyes.

“What did Dreamsinter mean by his ‘Not you, but Nightspore’? Am I a secondary character⁠—is he regarded as important; and I as unimportant? Where is Nightspore, and what is he doing? Am I to wait for his time and pleasure⁠—can I originate nothing?”

He continued sitting up, with straight-extended legs.

“I must make up my mind that this is a strange journey, and that the strangest things will happen in it. It’s no use making plans, for I can’t see two steps ahead⁠—everything is unknown. But one thing’s evident: nothing but the wildest audacity will carry me through, and I must sacrifice everything else to that. And therefore if Surtur shows himself again, I shall go forward to meet him, even if it means death.”

Through the black, quiet aisles of the forest the drum beats came again. The sound was a long way off and very faint. It was like the last mutterings of thunder after a heavy storm. Maskull listened, without getting up. The drumming faded into silence, and did not return.

He smiled queerly, and said aloud, “Thanks, Surtur! I accept the omen.”

When he was about to get up, he found that the shrivelled skin that had been his third arm was flapping disconcertingly with every movement of his body. He made perforations in it all around, as close to his chest as possible, with the fingernails of both hands; then he carefully twisted it off. In that world of rapid growth and ungrowth he judged that the stump would soon disappear. After that, he rose and peered into the darkness.

The forest at that point sloped rather steeply and, without thinking twice about it, he took the downhill direction, never doubting it would bring him somewhere. As soon as he started walking, his temper became gloomy and morose⁠—he was shaken, tired, dirty, and languid with hunger; moreover, he realised that the walk was not going to be a short one. Be that as it may, he determined to sit down no more until the whole dismal forest was at his back.

One after another the shadowy, houselike trees were observed, avoided, and passed. Far overhead the little patch of glowing sky was still always visible; otherwise he had no clue to the time of day. He continued tramping sullenly down the slope for many damp, slippery miles⁠—in some places through bogs. When, presently, the twilight seemed to thin, he guessed that the open world was not far away. The forest grew more palpable and grey, and now he saw its majesty better. The tree trunks were like round towers, and so wide were the intervals that they resembled natural amphitheatres. He could not make out the colour of the bark. Everything he saw amazed him, but his admiration was of the growling, grudging kind. The difference in light between the forest behind him and the forest ahead became so marked that he could no longer doubt that he was on the point of coming out.

Real light was in front of him; looking back, he