of the Night Land, you shall know that there was
in all that Land no flying thing, because that the air was grown very
thin; yet, as the Records did show, there had once been monstrous
flying-brutes, that went over the Land in mighty bounds; but this was in
a long gone age; and we could but suppose that the Records gave truth.

And here you shall know that, when the Monstruwacans did learn that I
would journey through the Night Land, in search of Naani, there had been
some foolish and well-intended talk among them that I take a small
flying-ship, that was in the Great Museum beside the models of the Great
Ships. For, truly, this machine was yet sound to go; for it was made of
the grey metal of the Mighty Pyramid, that did seem to have no power to
cease. Yet, in verity, I had no skill to manage this, neither had it
flown, through an hundred thousand years; so that none did know the
mastership of that art, which did be learned but by a constant practice,
and oft made uneasy by fallings that did wreck the machine, as I did
know from the Book of Flying. And, moreover, as I have told, the air of
the Night Land was grown over-weak to uphold such a thing; which, I
doubt not, had made the Peoples of the Pyramid to cease from flyings,
quite so much as that they did fear the Forces of Evil in the night.

And if that there had been air and skill sufficient unto this purpose of
flying, yet had I been wicked with foolishness that I should work to be
hung upward in the night, for all the Evil of the Night Land to behold.
And though I had gone up some great way, yet the machine had surely made
a great noise in the quietness of the eternal night, as you shall
suppose.

Now indeed am I gone weary that I should need to tell so much concerning
the air of that Time and Place; for surely I do seem to make this my
story as that I did make a lecturing upon matters of chemistry; and so
do I cast about, that I may not bother to tell more upon this matter.
Yet, in truth, a little more of my thinkings and observings had I better
set down here, and so be done with it. But you shall have patience with
me, and know that had this, my story, been no more than an idle tale, I
had been free to make no labour with such matters.

Now there doth a wonder come to me why that the Road Makers, who were of
that far-off Age which was before the Age of the Mighty Pyramid, did not
_fly_ downward from the upper world into the deep of the monstrous
valley; but