re need of me, and I did feel sudden to be
all adrift in the wilderness. But before this time, it had seemed as
that I surely went aright. And mayhaps your sympathy shall tell you just
how I to feel in the heart.

And after that I had lain there very awkward, and thought upon all
matters, I minded me that I would try the compass again upon the morrow;
but had no great hopes of the machine; yet did be willing to try aught
to see where I had gotten to. And truly, as it did come to my mind, if
that the compass did point a little as I did wot it was used to point in
the Lesser Redoubt, then, in verity, I was surely come something more
anigh to that unknown place of the world than I did dare to believe. And
this to be plain to you.

Then a little time did pass in which I did wake and sleep, and wake and
sleep, a little; but with no surety of sleep; but as that I was very
tired of the heart, and did but lie too wearied to come properly to
sleep.

And odd whiles I did lie with mine eyes half to open, and did look very
dreamful upward among the dark branches of the tree, as they did show
black and pretty against the redness of the shining that came from the
sea; for there was stood a great and bright-burning fire-hill in that
part of the sea that lay off the shore from me. And above the glaring of
the fire-hill, there was the deep night that did brood for ever above in
a monstrous black gloom of eternity, and did make the red smoke of the
volcano to show deep and mighty and thunderous-seeming, afar up in the
great dark. And the red and shining smoke did but show the utter
hugeness of the night, that had been upon the world through the great
ages.

And, in verity, as I did lie there so dreamful, it did come to me afresh
how wondrous strange was mine adventure; and how that I did lie warm and
alive in a Country of red light and smoking seas. And, truly, as I did
remember and consider, there was a great and lost world above me, upward
through the dark ... maybe an hundred and fifty great miles up in the
grim night.

And this thing did strike me very solemn, as I did lie; and I do trust
that you conceive how that there was, in truth, afar above in the
eternal and unknown night, the stupendous desolation of the dead world,
and the eternal snow and starless dark. And, as I do think, a cold so
bitter that it held death to all living that should come anigh to it.
Yet, bethink you, if one had lived in that far height of the dead w