ent their eyes and
nostrils were stopped with darkness and opaque cloud; then the darkness
warmed into a kind of brown fog. And far, far below them the brown fog
fell until it warmed into fire. Through the dense London atmosphere they
could see below them the flaming London lights; lights which lay beneath
them in squares and oblongs of fire. The fog and fire were mixed in a
passionate vapour; you might say that the fog was drowning the flames;
or you might say that the flames had set the fog on fire. Beside the
ship and beneath it (for it swung just under the ball), the immeasurable
dome itself shot out and down into the dark like a combination of
voiceless cataracts. Or it was like some cyclopean sea-beast sitting
above London and letting down its tentacles bewilderingly on every side,
a monstrosity in that starless heaven. For the clouds that belonged to
London had closed over the heads of the voyagers sealing up the entrance
of the upper air. They had broken through a roof and come into a temple
of twilight.

They were so near to the ball that Lucifer leaned his hand against it,
holding the vessel away, as men push a boat off from a bank. Above it
the cross already draped in the dark mists of the borderland was shadowy
and more awful in shape and size.

Professor Lucifer slapped his hand twice upon the surface of the great
orb as if he were caressing some enormous animal. "This is the fellow,"
he said, "this is the one for my money."

"May I with all respect inquire," asked the old monk, "what on earth you
are talking about?"

"Why this," cried Lucifer, smiting the ball again, "here is the only
symbol, my boy. So fat. So satisfied. Not like that scraggy individual,
stretching his arms in stark weariness." And he pointed up to the cross,
his face dark with a grin. "I was telling you just now, Michael, that I
can prove the best part of the rationalist case and the Christian humbug
from any symbol you liked to give me, from any instance I came across.
Here is an instance with a vengeance. What could possibly express your
philosophy and my philosophy better than the shape of that cross and
the shape of this ball? This globe is reasonable; that cross is
unreasonable. It is a four-legged animal, with one leg longer than the
others. The globe is inevitable. The cross is arbitrary. Above all the
globe is at unity with itself; the cross is primarily and above all
things at enmity with itself. The cross is the conflict of