Another seized it, and another, playing with it. It floated from my sight — that which had been Marakinoff, with all his schemes to turn our fair world into an undreamed-of-hell.
My strength began to come back to me. I found a thicket and slept; slept it must have been for many hours, for when I again awakened the dawn was rosing the east. I will not tell my sufferings. Suffice it to say that I found a spring and some fruit, and just before dusk had recovered enough to writhe up to the top of the wall and discover where I was.
The place was one of the farther islets of the Nan–Matal. To the north I caught the shadows of the ruins of Nan–Tauach, where was the moon door, black against the sky. Where was the moon door — which, someway, somehow, I must reach, and quickly.
At dawn of the next day I got together driftwood and bound it together in shape of a rough raft with fallen creepers. Then, with a makeshift paddle, I set forth for Nan–Tauach. Slowly, painfully, I crept up to it. It was late afternoon before I grounded my shaky craft on the little beach between the ruined sea-gates and, creeping up the giant steps, made my way to the inner enclosure.
And at its opening I stopped, and the tears ran streaming down my cheeks while I wept aloud with sorrow and with disappointment and with weariness.
For the great wall in which had been set the pale slab whose threshold we had crossed to the land of the Shining One lay shattered and broken. The monoliths were heaped about; the wall had fallen, and about them shone a film of water, half covering them.
There was no moon door!
Dazed and weeping, I drew closer, climbed upon their outlying fragments. I looked out only upon the sea. There had been a great subsidence, an earth shock, perhaps, tilting downward all that side — the echo, little doubt, of that cataclysm which had blasted the Dweller’s lair!
The little squared islet called Tau, in which were hidden the seven globes, had entirely disappeared. Upon the waters there was no trace of it.
The moon door was gone; the passage to the Moon Pool was closed to me — its chamber covered by the sea!
There was no road to Larry — nor to Lakla!
And there, for me, the world ended.
The Metal Monster
The Metal Monster
10. “Witch! Give back my sister”
21. Phantasmagoria metallioue.
PROLOGUE
