m. He trod quickly
across the sands. The orange-coloured parts were nearly hot enough to
roast food, he judged, but the violet parts were like fire itself. He
stepped on a patch in ignorance, and immediately jumped high into the
air with a startled yell.

The sea was voluptuously warm. It would not bear his weight, so he
determined to try swimming. First of all he stripped off his skin
garment, washed it thoroughly with sand and water, and laid it in the
sun to dry. Then he scrubbed himself as well as he could and washed out
his beard and hair. After that, he waded in a long way, until the water
reached his breast, and took to swimming--avoiding the spouts as far
as possible He found it no pastime. The water was everywhere of unequal
density. In some places he could swim, in others he could barely save
himself from drowning, in others again he could not force himself
beneath the surface at all. There were no outward signs to show what
the water ahead held in store for him. The whole business was most
dangerous.

He came out, feeling clean and invigorated. For a time he walked up and
down the sands, drying himself in the hot sunshine and looking around
him. He was a naked stranger in a huge, foreign, mystical world, and
whichever way he turned, unknown and threatening forces were glaring
at him. The gigantic, white, withering Branchspell, the awful,
body-changing Alppain, the beautiful, deadly, treacherous sea, the dark
and eerie Swaylone's Island, the spirit-crushing forest out of which he
had just escaped--to all these mighty powers, surrounding him on every
side, what resources had he, a feeble, ignorant traveller to oppose,
from a tiny planet on the other side of space, to avoid being utterly
destroyed?... Then he smiled to himself. "I've already been here two
days, and still I survive. I have luck--and with that one can balance
the universe. But what is luck--a verbal expression, or a thing?"

As he was putting on his skin, which was now dry, the answer came to
him, and this time he was grave. "Surtur brought me here, and Surtur
is watching over me. That is my 'luck.'... But what is Surtur in
this world?... How is he able to protect me against the blind and
ungovernable forces of nature? Is he stronger than Nature?..."

Hungry as he was for food, he was hungrier still for human society, for
he wished to inquire about all these things. He asked himself which way
he should turn his steps. There were only two ways;