.
Cave saw these pictures he saw only in flashes, his hands shook, his
head moved, the vision came and went, and grew foggy and indistinct. And
at first he had the greatest difficulty in finding the picture again
once the direction of it was lost.

His next clear vision, which came about a week after the first, the
interval having yielded nothing but tantalising glimpses and some useful
experience, showed him the view down the length of the valley. The view
was different, but he had a curious persuasion, which his subsequent
observations abundantly confirmed, that he was regarding this strange
world from exactly the same spot, although he was looking in a different
direction. The long facade of the great building, whose roof he had
looked down upon before, was now receding in perspective. He recognised
the roof. In the front of the facade was a terrace of massive
proportions and extraordinary length, and down the middle of the
terrace, at certain intervals, stood huge but very graceful masts,
bearing small shiny objects which reflected the setting sun. The import
of these small objects did not occur to Mr. Cave until some time after,
as he was describing the scene to Mr. Wace. The terrace overhung a
thicket of the most luxuriant and graceful vegetation, and beyond this
was a wide grassy lawn on which certain broad creatures, in form like
beetles but enormously larger, reposed. Beyond this again was a richly
decorated causeway of pinkish stone; and beyond that, and lined with
dense _red_ weeds, and passing up the valley exactly parallel with the
distant cliffs, was a broad and mirror-like expanse of water. The air
seemed full of squadrons of great birds, man{oe}uvring in stately
curves; and across the river was a multitude of splendid buildings,
richly coloured and glittering with metallic tracery and facets, among a
forest of moss-like and lichenous trees. And suddenly something flapped
repeatedly across the vision, like the fluttering of a jewelled fan or
the beating of a wing, and a face, or rather the upper part of a face
with very large eyes, came as it were close to his own and as if on the
other side of the crystal. Mr. Cave was so startled and so impressed by
the absolute reality of these eyes, that he drew his head back from the
crystal to look behind it. He had become so absorbed in watching that he
was quite surprised to find himself in the cool darkness of his little
shop, with its familiar odour of methyl, m