ou forgotten?"

"I half understand it, but I'm all confused."

"It's evident Crystalman has dug his claws into you pretty deeply,"
said Krag. "The sound comes from Muspel, but the rhythm is caused by its
travelling through Crystalman's atmosphere. His nature is rhythm as he
loves to call it--or dull, deadly repetition, as I name it."

"I remember," said Nightspore, biting his nails in the dark.

The throbbing became audible; it now sounded like a distant drum. A
small patch of strange light in the far distance, straight ahead of
them, began faintly to illuminate the floating island and the glassy sea
around it.

"Do all men escape from that ghastly world, or only I, and a few like
me?" asked Nightspore.

"If all escaped, I shouldn't sweat, my friend... There's hard work, and
anguish, and the risk of total death, waiting for us yonder."

Nightspore's heart sank. "Have I not yet finished, then?"

"If you wish it. You have got through. But will you wish it?"

The drumming grew loud and painful. The light resolved itself into a
tiny oblong of mysterious brightness in a huge wall of night. Krag's
grim and rocklike features were revealed.

"I can't face rebirth," said Nightspore. "The horror of death is nothing
to it."

"You will choose."

"I can do nothing. Crystalman is too powerful. I barely escaped with--my
own soul."

"You are still stupid with Earth fumes, and see nothing straight," said
Krag.

Nightspore made no reply, but seemed to be trying to recall something.
The water around them was so still, colourless, and transparent, that
they scarcely seemed to be borne up by liquid matter at all. Maskull's
corpse had disappeared.

The drumming was now like the clanging of iron. The oblong patch of
light grew much bigger; it burned, fierce and wild. The darkness
above, below, and on either side of it, began to shape itself into the
semblance of a huge, black wall, without bounds.

"Is that really a wall we are coming to?"

"You will soon find out. What you see is Muspel, and that light is the
gate you have to enter."

Nightspore's heart beat wildly.

"Shall I remember?" he muttered.

"Yes, you'll remember."

"Accompany me, Krag, or I shall be lost."

"There is nothing for me to do in there. I shall wait outside for you."

"You are returning to the struggle?" demanded Nightspore, gnawing his
fingertips.

"Yes."

"I dare not."

The thunderous clangor of the rhythmical beats struck on his hea