he took a ring which
he placed on his finger. The stone set in the ring emitted a brilliant
light, for it was a magic stone of whose power we shall learn more
further on. Thereupon King Loc went to his palace, put on a travelling
cloak and thick boots and took a stick; then he started on a journey
across crowded streets, great highways, villages, galleries of porphyry,
torrents of rock-oil, and crystal grottoes, all of which communicated
with each other through narrow openings.

He seemed lost in deep meditation and he uttered words that had no
meaning. But he trudged on doggedly. Mountains obstructed his path
and he climbed the mountains. Precipices opened under his feet and he
descended into the precipices; he forded streams, he crossed horrible
regions black with the fumes of sulphur. He trudged across burning
lava on which his feet left their imprint; he had the appearance of a
desperately dogged traveller. He penetrated into gloomy caverns into
which the water of the ocean oozed drop by drop, and flowed like tears
along the sea wrack, forming pools on the uneven ground where countless
crustaceans increased and multiplied into hideous shapes. Enormous
crabs, crayfish, giant lobsters and sea spiders crackled under the
dwarfs feet, then crawled away leaving some of their claws behind, and
in their flight rousing horrible molluscs and octopuses centuries old
that suddenly writhed their hundred arms and spat fetid poison out of
their bird-beaks. And yet King Loc went on undaunted. He made his way
to the ends of these caverns, through the midst of a heaped up chaos of
shelled monsters armed with spikes, with double saw-edged nippers, with
claws that crept stealthily up to his neck and bleared eyes on swaying
tentacles. He crept up the sides of the cavern by clinging to the rough
surface of the rocks and the mailed monsters crept with him, but he
never faltered until he recognised by touch a stone that projected from
the centre of the natural arch. He touched the stone with his magic
ring and suddenly it rolled away with a horrible crash, and at once a
glory of light flooded the cavern with its beautiful waves and put to
flight the swarming monsters bred in its gloom.

As King Loc thrust his head into the opening through which daylight
poured, he saw George of Blanchelande in his glass dungeon where he was
lamenting grievously as he thought of Honey-Bee and of earth. For King
Loc had undertaken this subterranean journey