ones were
now accumulating beyond all limit, filling my range of vision to the
northern horizon with a dazzling glister: in mounds, and parterres, and
scattered disconnection they lay, like largesse of autumn leaves, spread
out over those Elysian fields and fairy uplands of wealth, trillions of
billions, so that I had need to steer my twining way among them. Now,
too, I noticed that, but for these stones, all roughness had
disappeared, not a trace of the upheaval going on a little further south
being here, for the ice lay positively as smooth as a table before me.
It is my belief that this stretch of smooth ice has never, never felt
one shock, or stir, or throe, and reaches right down to the bottom of
the deep.

* * * * *

And now with a wild hilarity I flew. Gradually, a dizziness, a lunacy,
had seized upon me, till finally, up-buoyed on air, and dancing mad, I
sped, I spun, with grinning teeth that chattered and gibbered, and
eyeballs of distraction: for a Fear, too--most cold and dreadful--had
its hand of ice upon my heart, I being so alone in that place, face to
face with the Ineffable: but still with a giddy levity, and a fatal joy,
and a blind hilarity, on I sped, I spun.

* * * * *

The odometer measured nine miles from my start. I was in the immediate
neighbourhood of the Pole.

I cannot say when it began, but now I was conscious of a sound in my
ears, distinct and near, a steady sound of splashing, or fluttering,
resembling the noising of a cascade or brook: and it grew. Forty more
steps I took (slide I could not now for the meteorites)--perhaps
sixty--perhaps eighty: and now, to my sudden horror, I stood by a
circular clean-cut lake.

One minute only, swaying and nodding there, I stood: and then I dropped
down flat in swoon.

* * * * *

In a hundred years, I suppose, I should never succeed in analysing
_why_ I swooned: but my consciousness still retains the impression of
that horrid thrill. I saw nothing distinctly, for my whole being reeled
and toppled drunken, like a spinning-top in desperate death-struggle at
the moment when it flags, and wobbles dissolutely to fall; but the very
instant that my eyes met what was before me, I knew, I knew, that here
was the Sanctity of Sanctities, the old eternal inner secret of the Life
of this Earth, which it was a most burning shame for a man to see. The
lake, I fancy,