ul....

Light, its vibrations screeching into thin and acid flame-music,
transposed his soul. He saw the battle of the molecules, the
partitioning asunder of the elements; saw sound falling far behind its
lighter-winged, fleeter-footed brother; saw the inequality of this race,
"swifter than the weaver's shuttle," and felt that he was present at the
very beginnings of Time and Space. Like unto some majestic comet that in
passing had blazed out "Be not light; be sound!" the fire-god mounted to
the blue basin of Heaven and left time behind, but not space; for in
space sound abides not and cycles may be cancelled in a tone. Thus sound
was born, and of it rhythm, the planets portioning it; and from rhythm
came music, primordial, mad, yet music, and Stannum heard it as a single
tone that never ceased, a tone that jarred the sun with mighty
concussions, ruled the moon, and made rise etheric waves upon the rim of
the interstellar milky way. Then quired the morning stars, and at their
concordance Stannum was affrighted....

His ear was become a monstrous labyrinth, a cortical lute of three
thousand strings, and upon it impacted the early music at the dawn of
things. In the planetary slime he heard the screaming struggles of fishy
beasts; in the tanglewood of hot, aspiring forests were muffled roarings
of gigantic mastodons, of tapirs that humped at the sky, beetles big as
camels, and crocodiles with wings. Wicked creatures snarled crepitantly,
and their crackling noises were echoed by lizard and dragon, ululating
snouted birds and hissing leagues of snaky lengths. Stannum fled from
these disturbing dreams seeking safety in the mountains. The tone
pursued him, but he felt that it had a less bestial quality. Casting his
eyes upon the vague plateau below he witnessed two-legged creatures
pursuing game with stone hatchets; while in the tropical-colored
tree-tops nudging apes eyed the contest with malicious regard. The cry
of the pursuers had a suggestive sound; occasionally as one fell the
shriek that reached Stannum plucked at his heart, for it was a cry of
human distress. He went down the mountain, but lost his way, his only
clue in the obscurity of the woods being the tone....

And now he heard a strange noise, a noise of harsh stones bruised
together and punctuated with shouts and sobbings. There was rhythmic
rise and fall in the savage music, and soon he came upon a sudden secret
glade of burial. Male and female slowly postur