hion the violent tossing
of a small craft on a choppy sea. The two passengers became unhappy.
Haunte, from his seat in the stern, gazed at them sardonically with one
eye. The darkness now came on rapidly.

About ninety minutes after the commencement of the voyage they arrived
at the foothills of Lichstorm. They began to mount. There was no
daylight left to see by. Beneath them, however, on both sides of
them and in the rear, the landscape was lighted up for a considerable
distance by the now vivid blue rays of the twin male stones. Ahead,
where these rays did not shine, Haunte was guided by the self-luminous
nature of the rocks, grass, and trees. These were faintly
phosphorescent; the vegetation shone out more strongly than the soil.

The moon was not shining and there were no stars; Maskull therefore
inferred that the upper atmosphere was dense with mist. Once or twice,
from his sensations of choking, he thought that they were entering a
fogbank, but it was a strange kind of fog, for it had the effect of
doubling the intensity of every light in front of them. Whenever this
happened, nightmare feelings attacked him; he experienced transitory,
unreasoning fright and horror.

Now they passed high above the valley that separated the foothills from
the mountains themselves. The boat began an ascent of many thousands
of feet and, as the cliffs were near, Haunte had to manoeuvre carefully
with the rear light in order to keep clear of them. Maskull watched the
delicacy of his movements, not without admiration. A long time went
by. It grew much colder; the air was damp and drafty. The fog began to
deposit something like snow on their persons. Maskull kept sweating with
terror, not because of the danger they were in, but because of the cloud
banks that continued to envelop them.

They cleared the first line of precipices. Still mounting, but this time
with a forward motion, as could be seen by the vapours illuminated by
the male stones through which they passed, they were soon altogether out
of sight of solid ground. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly the moon broke
through. In the upper atmosphere thick masses of fog were seen crawling
hither and thither, broken in many places by thin rifts of sky, through
one of which Teargeld was shining. Below them, to their left, a gigantic
peak, glittering with green ice, showed itself for a few seconds, and
was then swallowed up again. All the rest of the world was hidden by the
mist. Th