rned
up before when he was in danger, and she would not fail him now. But
this was a mere ghost of a thought that brought little comfort, and
merely added its quota of force to the speed that whipped him on, ever
faster, into the huge white moon-world in front.

For this, then, he had escaped from the horror of the Empty House! To be
sucked up into the moon, the "relentless, misty moon"--to be drawn into
its cruel, silver web, and destroyed. The Song to the Misty Moon
outside the window came back in snatches and added to his terror; only
it seemed now weeks ago since he had heard it. Something of its real
meaning, too, filtered down into his heart, and he trembled anew to
think that the moon could be a great, vast, moving Being, alive and with
a purpose....

But why, oh, why did they keep shouting these horrid snatches of the
song through the sky? Trapped! Trapped! The word haunted him through the
night:

Thy songs are nightly driven,
From sky to sky,
Eternally,
O'er the old, grey hills of heaven!

_Caught!_ Caught at last! The moon's prisoner, a captive in her airless
caves; alone on her dead white plains; searching for ever in vain for
the governess; wandering alone and terrified.

By the awful grace
Of thy weird white face.

The thought crazed him, and he struggled like a bird caught in a net.
But he might as well have struggled to push the worlds out of their
courses. The power against him was the power of the universe in which he
was nothing but a little, lost, whirling atom. It was all of no avail,
and the moon did not even smile at his feeble efforts. He was too light
to revolve round her, too impalpable to create his own orbit; he had not
even the consistency of a comet; he had reached the point of stagnation,
as it were--the dead level--the neutral zone where the attractions of
the earth and moon meet and counterbalance one another--where bodies
have no weight and existence no meaning.

Now the moon was close upon him; he could see nothing else. There lay
the vast, shining sea of light in front of him. Behind, the roar of the
following creature grew fainter and fainter, as he outdistanced it in
the awful swiftness of the huge drop down upon the moon mountains.

Already he was close enough to its surface to hear nothing of its great
singing but a deep, confused murmur. And, as the distance increased, he
realised that the change in his own condition increased. He felt as if
he were flying