nd repulsive movements,
toward the other bank of the stream.

Maskull's apathy left him after this adventure. He became uneasy and
thoughtful. He imagined that he was beginning to see things through
Digrung's eyes, and that there were strange troubles immediately ahead.
The next time his eyes started to blur, he fought it down with his will,
and nothing happened.

The valley ascended with many windings toward the hills. It narrowed
considerably, and the wooded slopes on either side grew steeper and
higher. The stream shrunk to about twenty feet across, but it was
deeper--it was alive with motion, music, and bubbles. The electric
sensations caused by its water became more pronounced, almost
disagreeably so; but there was nowhere else to walk. With its deafening
confusion of sounds from the multitude of living creatures, the little
valley resembled a vast conversation hall of Nature. The life was still
more prolific than before; every square foot of space was a tangle of
struggling wills, both animal and vegetable. For a naturalist it
would have been paradise, for no two shapes were alike, and all were
fantastic, with individual character.

It looked as if life forms were being coined so fast by Nature that
there was not physical room for all. Nevertheless it was not as on
Earth, where a hundred seeds are scattered in order that one may
be sown. Here the young forms seemed to survive, while, to find
accommodation for them, the old ones perished; everywhere he looked they
were withering and dying, without any ostensible cause--they were simply
being killed by new life.

Other creatures sported so wildly, in front of his very eyes, that they
became of different "kingdoms" altogether. For example, a fruit was
lying on the ground, of the size and shape of a lemon, but with a
tougher skin. He picked it up, intending to eat the contained pulp; but
inside it was a fully formed young tree, just on the point of bursting
its shell. Maskull threw it away upstream. It floated back toward him;
by the time he was even with it, its downward motion had stopped and it
was swimming against the current. He fished it out and discovered that
it had sprouted six rudimentary legs.

Maskull sang no paeans of praise in honour of the gloriously overcrowded
valley. On the contrary, he felt deeply cynical and depressed. He
thought that the unseen power--whether it was called Nature, Life,
Will, or God--that was so frantic to rush forward and o