to touch the berries that are there
for a purpose, on the right side going down; and so to come to the
guardian on his pedestal who had slept for a thousand years and should
be sleeping still; and go in through the open window. One man was to
wait outside by the crack in the World until the others came out with
the golden box, and, should they cry for help, he was to threaten at
once to unfasten the iron clamp that kept the crack together. When the
box was secured they were to travel all night and all the following
day, until the cloud-banks that wrapped the slopes of Mluna were well
between them and Owner of the Box.

The door in the cliff was open. They passed without a murmur down the
cold steps, Slith leading them all the way. A glance of longing, no
more, each gave to the beautiful berries. The guardian upon his
pedestal was still asleep. Slorg climbed by a ladder, that Slith knew
where to find, to the iron clamp across the crack in the World, and
waited beside it with a chisel in his hand, listening closely for
anything untoward, while his friends slipped into the house; and no
sound came. And presently Slith and Sippy found the golden box:
everything seemed happening as they had planned, it only remained to
see if it was the right one and to escape with it from that dreadful
place. Under the shelter of the pedestal, so near to the guardian that
they could feel his warmth, which paradoxically had the effect of
chilling the blood of the boldest of them, they smashed the emerald
hasp and opened the golden box; and there they read by the light of
ingenious sparks which Slith knew how to contrive, and even this poor
light they hid with their bodies. What was their joy, even at that
perilous moment, as they lurked between the guardian and the abyss, to
find that the box contained fifteen peerless odes in the alcaic form,
five sonnets that were by far the most beautiful in the world, nine
ballads in the manner of Provence that had no equal in the treasuries
of man, a poem addressed to a moth in twenty-eight perfect stanzas, a
piece of blank verse of over a hundred lines on a level not yet known
to have been attained by man, as well as fifteen lyrics on which no
merchant would dare to set a price. They would have read them again,
for they gave happy tears to a man and memories of dear things done in
infancy, and brought sweet voices from far sepulchres; but Slith
pointed imperiously to the way by which they had come, and