h, wiry, and
savage.

As Maskull continued to explore the landscape, he forgot Oceaxe and his
passion. Other strange feelings came to the front. The morning was gay
and bright. The sun scorched down, quickly-changing clouds sailed across
the sky, the earth was vivid, wild, and lonely. Yet he experienced no
aesthetic sensations--he felt nothing but an intense longing for action
and possession. When he looked at anything, he immediately wanted to
deal with it. The atmosphere of the land seemed not free, but sticky;
attraction and repulsion were its constituents. Apart from this wish to
play a personal part in what was going on around and beneath him, the
scenery had no significance for him.

So preoccupied was he, that his arm partly released its clasp. Oceaxe
turned around to gaze at him. Whether or not she was satisfied with what
she saw, she uttered a low laugh, like a peculiar chord.

"Cold again so quickly, Maskull?"

"What do you want?" he asked absently, still looking over the side.
"It's extraordinary how drawn I feel to all this."

"You wish to take a hand?"

"I wish to get down."

"Oh, we have a good way to go yet.... So you really feel different?"

"Different from what? What are you talking about?" said Maskull, still
lost in abstraction.

Oceaxe laughed again. "It would be strange if we couldn't make a man of
you, for the material is excellent."

After that, she turned her back once more.

The air islands differed from water islands in another way. They were
not on a plane surface, but sloped upward, like a succession of broken
terraces, as the journey progressed. The shrowk had hitherto been flying
well above the ground; but now, when a new line of towering cliffs
confronted them, Oceaxe did not urge the beast upward, but caused it to
enter a narrow canyon, which intersected the mountains like a channel.
They were instantly plunged into deep shade. The canal was not above
thirty feet wide; the walls stretched upward on both sides for many
hundred feet. It was as cool as an ice chamber. When Maskull attempted
to plumb the chasm with his eyes, he saw nothing but black obscurity.

"What is at the bottom?" he asked.

"Death for you, if you go to look for it."

"We know that. I mean, is there any kind of life down there?"

"Not that I have ever heard of," said Oceaxe, "but of course all things
are possible."

"I think very likely there is life," he returned thoughtfully.

Her ironical laugh s