d east and west in a straight line, broken only
here and there by a few creeks. They were of a brilliant orange colour,
but there were patches of violet. The forest appeared to stand sentinel
over the shore for its entire length. Everything else was sea and
sky--he had never seen so much water. The semicircle of the skyline
was so vast that he might have imagined himself on a flat world, with
a range of vision determined only by the power of his eye. The sea was
unlike any sea on Earth. It resembled an immense liquid opal. On a body
colour of rich, magnificent emerald-green, flashes of red, yellow, and
blue were everywhere shooting up and vanishing. The wave motion was
extraordinary. Pinnacles of water were slowly formed until they attained
a height of perhaps ten or twenty feet, when they would suddenly sink
downward and outward, creating in their descent a series of concentric
rings for long distances around them. Quickly moving currents, like
rivers in the sea, could be seen, racing away from land; they were of
a darker green and bore no pinnacles. Where the sea met the shore,
the waves rushed over the sands far in, with almost sinister
rapidity--accompanied by a weird, hissing, spitting sound, which was
what Maskull had heard. The green tongues rolled in without foam.

About twenty miles distant, as he judged, directly opposite him, a
long, low island stood up from the sea, black and not distinguished in
outline. It was Swaylone's Island. Maskull was less interested in that
than in the blue sunset that glowed behind its back. Alppain had
set, but the whole northern sky was plunged into the minor key by its
afterlight. Branchspell in the zenith was white and overpowering, the
day was cloudless and terrifically hot; but where the blue sun had sunk,
a sombre shadow seemed to overhang the world. Maskull had a feeling
of disintegration--just as if two chemically distinct forces were
simultaneously acting upon the cells of his body. Since the afterglow of
Alppain affected him like this, he thought it more than likely that he
would never be able to face that sun itself, and go on living. Still,
some modification might happen to him that would make it possible.

The sea tempted him. He made up his mind to bathe, and at once walked
toward the shore. The instant he stepped outside the shadow line of the
forest trees, the blinding rays of the sun beat down on him so savagely
that for a few minutes he felt sick and his head swa