slope. I might have been wrong about East and Westânot about North and South. You know, Antarctica rises, sweeping up from the northern seacoast and the Great Ice Barrier to that awe-inspiring range from which tower those two most terrible peaks in the worldâthe volcanoes aptly named Erebus and Terrorâinfernal fire blasting out on infernal cold. Poor little life shudders away as these two ancient enemies rush out at each other.
âWell, there we were, swinging along up that slope to where those awful bastions of the Inferno towered above us. The most modest fancy that flitted through my pulsing head was that some mad, unknown Eskimo cannibals were whisking off this windfall of fresh meat to broil it in some convenient larva crack.
âI suppose I was terribly exhausted. I must have dozed off, because I had failed to keep my lookout. Anyhow, next time I squinted ahead we had made wonderful progress. The team was still bounding ahead, the flapping teamsters still prancing along beside them, and we were far up the slope at the top of which I felt sure my sorry miseries would end. That was true enough. But truth was stranger than my wildest dread. The jerking was extremely tiring in itself, and, of course, I was nearly dead with fatigue to start with. It doesnât matter whether you call it a dead faint or a sleep of complete exhaustion.
âMy next waking did what Iâd certainly have bet was impossibleâit beat my firstâand beat it hollowâso hollow that though I remembered my start at that first come-to, at that second I thought again that now at last it must be trueâthis is deathâthis kind of grim nonsense can only take place after death, after one has taken leave of the last vestiges of the world of common sense. It couldnât fit into this earth, anyhow, anywhere. This, baldly, is what I saw. I was still more or less on my back, so thatâs why I first noticed the sky. There wasnât a star in it. It was all fogged over. Nothing odd in that, youâll say. But wait a minute. It was all fog, but a fog such as Iâve never seen before or since. For a moment I thought my sight had gone, that, perhaps, in the afterlife everything was vague and misty. If I am alive, I reflected, Iâve lost the power to focus. It wasâhow shall I put it?âlike looking up at the flies in the transformation scene of a pantomime, only all out of focus. There was wave upon wave of fringes, skirts, curtains, all of some filmy, faintly fluted draping. They rustled as they undulated. The sound was so quiet and natural that, since I couldnât see them clearly enough to judge their distance, I thought they must be near, perhaps twenty or thirty feet above my head.
âBut, if the form was ambiguous, the color wasâwell, I have to work that word pretty hardâ amazing . You know the colors of a large vacuum tube when currentâs in it? The whole of what I was looking up at was flushing and pulsing as it was washed by these tides of uncanny color.
âPerhaps it was the word âpulsingâ that made me realize that the actual pulsing had stopped. Yes, I was at a standstill or, rather, at a lie-still. Perhaps it was dumb to wish I could see what all those eerie searchlights were falling on. I tried to raise my head and at once felt a curious broad hand helping me. But what I saw made me forget the odd feel, forget the odd sky. Oh I could see well enough. There was nothing wrong with my eyes. If anything was wrong, it was with my brain.
âI was still lying on the sled, and my goggles and wrappings were gone. But there was no need for them. It was warm, damply warm. And there was no doubt that I was still out of doors. Why that made me go back again to the belief that I was deadâgone for good from this worldâI donât know, though neither of âthe other placesâ are said to be âmuggy,â are they?
âBut I couldnât
âWell, there we were, swinging along up that slope to where those awful bastions of the Inferno towered above us. The most modest fancy that flitted through my pulsing head was that some mad, unknown Eskimo cannibals were whisking off this windfall of fresh meat to broil it in some convenient larva crack.
âI suppose I was terribly exhausted. I must have dozed off, because I had failed to keep my lookout. Anyhow, next time I squinted ahead we had made wonderful progress. The team was still bounding ahead, the flapping teamsters still prancing along beside them, and we were far up the slope at the top of which I felt sure my sorry miseries would end. That was true enough. But truth was stranger than my wildest dread. The jerking was extremely tiring in itself, and, of course, I was nearly dead with fatigue to start with. It doesnât matter whether you call it a dead faint or a sleep of complete exhaustion.
âMy next waking did what Iâd certainly have bet was impossibleâit beat my firstâand beat it hollowâso hollow that though I remembered my start at that first come-to, at that second I thought again that now at last it must be trueâthis is deathâthis kind of grim nonsense can only take place after death, after one has taken leave of the last vestiges of the world of common sense. It couldnât fit into this earth, anyhow, anywhere. This, baldly, is what I saw. I was still more or less on my back, so thatâs why I first noticed the sky. There wasnât a star in it. It was all fogged over. Nothing odd in that, youâll say. But wait a minute. It was all fog, but a fog such as Iâve never seen before or since. For a moment I thought my sight had gone, that, perhaps, in the afterlife everything was vague and misty. If I am alive, I reflected, Iâve lost the power to focus. It wasâhow shall I put it?âlike looking up at the flies in the transformation scene of a pantomime, only all out of focus. There was wave upon wave of fringes, skirts, curtains, all of some filmy, faintly fluted draping. They rustled as they undulated. The sound was so quiet and natural that, since I couldnât see them clearly enough to judge their distance, I thought they must be near, perhaps twenty or thirty feet above my head.
âBut, if the form was ambiguous, the color wasâwell, I have to work that word pretty hardâ amazing . You know the colors of a large vacuum tube when currentâs in it? The whole of what I was looking up at was flushing and pulsing as it was washed by these tides of uncanny color.
âPerhaps it was the word âpulsingâ that made me realize that the actual pulsing had stopped. Yes, I was at a standstill or, rather, at a lie-still. Perhaps it was dumb to wish I could see what all those eerie searchlights were falling on. I tried to raise my head and at once felt a curious broad hand helping me. But what I saw made me forget the odd feel, forget the odd sky. Oh I could see well enough. There was nothing wrong with my eyes. If anything was wrong, it was with my brain.
âI was still lying on the sled, and my goggles and wrappings were gone. But there was no need for them. It was warm, damply warm. And there was no doubt that I was still out of doors. Why that made me go back again to the belief that I was deadâgone for good from this worldâI donât know, though neither of âthe other placesâ are said to be âmuggy,â are they?
âBut I couldnât
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