st end of Last Street, there is a hole that you take
to be a well, close by the garden wall, but that if you lower yourself
by your hands over the edge of the hole, and feel about with your feet
till they find a ledge, that is the top step of a flight of stairs
that takes you down over the edge of the World. "For all that men
know, those stairs may have a purpose and even a bottom step," said
the arch-idolater, "but discussion about the lower flights is idle."
Then the teeth of Pombo chattered, for he feared the darkness, but he
that made idols of his own explained that those stairs were always lit
by the faint blue gloaming in which the World spins. "Then," he said,
"you will go by Lonely House and under the bridge that leads from the
House to Nowhere, and whose purpose is not guessed; thence past
Maharrion, the god of flowers, and his high-priest, who is neither
bird nor cat; and so you will come to the little idol Duth, the
disreputable god that will grant your prayer." And he went on carving
again at his idol of jasper for the king who was weary of Wosh; and
Pombo thanked him and went singing away, for in his vernacular mind he
thought that "he _had_ the gods."

It is a long journey from London to World's End, and Pombo had no
money left, yet within five weeks he was strolling along Last
Street; but how he contrived to get there I will not say, for it was
not entirely honest. And Pombo found the well at the end of the garden
beyond the end house of Last Street, and many thoughts ran through his
mind as he hung by his hands from the edge, but chiefest of all those
thoughts was one that said the gods were laughing at him through the
mouth of the arch-idolater, their prophet, and the thought beat in his
head till it ached like his wrists ... and then he found the step.

And Pombo walked downstairs. There, sure enough, was the gloaming in
which the world spins, and stars shone far off in it faintly;
there was nothing before him as he went downstairs but that strange
blue waste of gloaming, with its multitudes of stars, and comets
plunging through it on outward journeys and comets returning home. And
then he saw the lights of the bridge to Nowhere, and all of a sudden
he was in the glare of the shimmering parlour-window of Lonely House;
and he heard voices there pronouncing words, and the voices were
nowise human, and but for his bitter need he had screamed and fled.
Halfway between the voices and Maharrion, whom he now