secret and dangerous places where
life probes into life, it is there that the masters of the world, the
lords of the beast, the rebel sons of Fate come to their own....

"You sleeping away there in the cities! Do you know what it means for
you that I am here to-night?

"Do you know what it means to you?

"I am just one--just the precursor.

"Presently, if you will not budge, those hot cities must be burnt about
you. You must come out of them...."

He wandered now uttering his thoughts as they came to him, and he saw no
more living creatures because they fled and hid before the sound of his
voice. He wandered until the moon, larger now and yellow tinged, was low
between the black bars of the tree stems. And then it sank very suddenly
behind a hilly spur and the light failed swiftly.

He stumbled and went with difficulty. He could go no further among these
rocks and ravines, and he sat down at the foot of a tree to wait for
day.

He sat very still indeed.

A great stillness came over the world, a velvet silence that wrapped
about him, as the velvet shadows wrapped about him. The corncrakes had
ceased, all the sounds and stir of animal life had died away, the breeze
had fallen. A drowsing comfort took possession of him. He grew more
placid and more placid still. He was enormously content to find that
fear had fled before him and was gone. He drifted into that state of
mind when one thinks without ideas, when one's mind is like a starless
sky, serene and empty.

12

Some hours later Benham found that the trees and rocks were growing
visible again, and he saw a very bright star that he knew must be
Lucifer rising amidst the black branches. He was sitting upon a rock at
the foot of a slender-stemmed leafless tree. He had been asleep, and it
was daybreak. Everything was coldly clear and colourless.

He must have slept soundly.

He heard a cock crow, and another answer--jungle fowl these must be,
because there could be no village within earshot--and then far away and
bringing back memories of terraced houses and ripe walled gardens, was
the scream of peacocks. And some invisible bird was making a hollow
beating sound among the trees near at hand. TUNK.... TUNK, and out of
the dry grass came a twittering.

There was a green light in the east that grew stronger, and the stars
after their magnitudes were dissolving in the blue; only a few remained
faintly visible. The sound of birds increased. Through the t