hed about him. The air that met him was, at
first, chilly and cellar-like; gradually, however, it grew milder and
milder, and warmer and warmer.

The stream now flowed along calmly and quietly, and broadened out
continually till it fell into a large lake.

Beyond the borders of this lake, but only half visible in the gloom,
stretched swamps and morasses, where he heard sounds as of huge beasts
wading and trampling. Serpent like they rose and writhed with a crashing
and splashing and snorting amidst the tepid mud and mire.

By the phosphorescent gleams he saw various fishes close to his boat,
but all of them lacked eyes.

And he caught glimpses of the outlines of gigantic sea-serpents
stretching far away into the darkness. He now understood that it was
from down here that they pop up their heads off the coast in the dog
days when the sea is warm.

The lindworm, with its flat head and duck's beak, darted after fish, and
crept up to the surface of the earth through the slimy ways of mire and
marsh.

Through the warm and choking gloom there came, from time to time, a
cooling chilling blast from the cold curves and winds of the slimy and
slippery greenish lichworm,[2] which bores its way through the earth and
eats away the coffins that are rotting in the churchyards.

Horrible shapeless monsters, with streaming manes, such as are said to
sometimes appear in mountain tarns, writhed and wallowed and seized
their prey in the fens and marshes.

And he caught glimpses of all sorts of humanlike creatures, such as
fishermen and sailors meet and marvel at on the sea, and landsmen see
outside the elfin mounds.

And, besides, that there was a soft whizzing and an endless hovering and
swarming of beings, whose shapes were nevertheless invisible to the eye
of man.

Then the boat glided into miry pulpy water, where her course tended
downwards, and where the earth-vault above darkened as it sank lower and
lower.

All at once a blinding strip of light shot down from a bright blue slit
high, high, above him.

A stuffy vapour stood round about him. The water was as yellow and
turbid as that which comes out of steam boilers.

And he called to mind the peculiar tepid undrinkable water which bubbles
up by the side of artesian wells. It was quite hot. Up there they were
boring down to a world of warm watercourses and liquid strata beneath
the earth's crust.

Heat as from an oven rose up from the huge abysses and dizzying cleft