ea were held back to
let the hosts of Israel through. On each side of the stream was the
black shadow cast by the folds of the high canopies And straight as a
road between the opaque walls gleamed, shimmered, and danced the
shining, racing, rapids of the moonlight.

Far, it seemed immeasurably far, along this stream of silver fire I
sensed, rather than saw, something coming. It drew first into sight as
a deeper glow within the light. On and on it swept toward us--an
opalescent mistiness that sped with the suggestion of some winged
creature in arrowed flight. Dimly there crept into my mind memory of
the Dyak legend of the winged messenger of Buddha--the Akla bird
whose feathers are woven of the moon rays, whose heart is a living
opal, whose wings in flight echo the crystal clear music of the white
stars--but whose beak is of frozen flame and shreds the souls of
unbelievers.

Closer it drew and now there came to me sweet, insistent
tinklings--like pizzicati on violins of glass; crystal clear; diamonds
melting into sounds!

Now the Thing was close to the end of the white path; close up to the
barrier of darkness still between the ship and the sparkling head of
the moon stream. Now it beat up against that barrier as a bird against
the bars of its cage. It whirled with shimmering plumes, with swirls
of lacy light, with spirals of living vapour. It held within it odd,
unfamiliar gleams as of shifting mother-of-pearl. Coruscations and
glittering atoms drifted through it as though it drew them from the
rays that bathed it.

Nearer and nearer it came, borne on the sparkling waves, and ever
thinner shrank the protecting wall of shadow between it and us. Within
the mistiness was a core, a nucleus of intenser light--veined,
opaline, effulgent, intensely alive. And above it, tangled in the
plumes and spirals that throbbed and whirled were seven glowing
lights.

Through all the incessant but strangely ordered movement of
the--_thing_--these lights held firm and steady. They were seven--like
seven little moons. One was of a pearly pink, one of a delicate
nacreous blue, one of lambent saffron, one of the emerald you see in
the shallow waters of tropic isles; a deathly white; a ghostly
amethyst; and one of the silver that is seen only when the flying fish
leap beneath the moon.

The tinkling music was louder still. It pierced the ears with a
shower of tiny lances; it made the heart beat jubilantly--and checked
it dolorously.