nd blue, their lettering
strung across their faces. They gave on unknown seas, and Georgie's
urgent desire was to return swiftly across this floating atlas to known
bearings. He told himself repeatedly that it was no good to hurry; but
still he hurried desperately, and the islands slipped and slid under his
feet; the straits yawned and widened, till he found himself utterly
lost in the world's fourth dimension, with no hope of return. Yet only
a little distance away he could see the old world with the rivers and
mountain-chains marked according to the Sandhurst rules of mapmaking.
Then that person for whom he had come to the Lily Lock (that was its
name) ran up across unexplored territories, and showed him away. They
fled hand in hand till they reached a road that spanned ravines, and ran
along the edge of precipices, and was tunnelled through mountains. "This
goes to our brushwood-pile," said his companion; and all his trouble
was at an end. He took a pony, because he understood that this was
the Thirty-Mile Ride and he must ride swiftly, and raced through the
clattering tunnels and round the curves, always downhill, till he heard
the sea to his left, and saw it raging under a full moon, against sandy
cliffs. It was heavy going, but he recognised the nature of the country,
the dark-purple downs inland, and the bents that whistled in the wind.
The road was eaten away in places, and the sea lashed at him-black,
foamless tongues of smooth and glossy rollers; but he was sure that
there was less danger from the sea than from "Them," whoever "They"
were, inland to his right. He knew, too, that he would be safe if he
could reach the down with the lamp on it. This came as he expected: he
saw the one light a mile ahead along the beach, dismounted, turned to
the right, walked quietly over to the brushwood-pile, found the little
steamer had returned to the beach whence he had unmoored it, and--must
have fallen asleep, for he could remember no more. "I'm gettin' the hang
of the geography of that place," he said to himself, as he shaved
next morning. "I must have made some sort of circle. Let's see. The
Thirty-Mile Ride (now how the deuce did I know it was called the
Thirty-Mile, Ride?) joins the sea-road beyond the first down where the
lamp is. And that atlas-country lies at the back of the Thirty-Mile
Ride, somewhere out to the right beyond the hills and tunnels. Rummy
things, dreams. 'Wonder what makes mine fit into each other so?