from its physical bonds. I looked hopefully at the empty sky: of course
we would get help at any moment.

Once more my spirits were raised; there was no point in trying to get
out of the depression now, seeing we could as easily be rescued from one
portion of the grass as from another. Again the grass was soft and
pleasant to touch and Slafe's preoccupation with his pictures no longer
seemed either eccentric or heroic, but rather proper and sensible. Like
Alice and the Red Queen, since we had given up trying to reach a
particular spot we found ourselves able to travel with comparative ease.
We inspected Slafe's activities with interest and responded readily to
his autocratic gestures indicating positions and poses we should take in
order to be incorporated in his record.

But our gaiety was again succeeded by another period of despondency; we
repeated all our antics, struggles and despair. Again I fought madly
against the enmeshing weed and again I gave myself up to death only to
be revived in the moment of my resignation.

The cameraman was still untouched by the successive waves of fear and
joyfulness. Invincibly armored by some strange spirit he kept on and on,
although by now I could not understand--in those moments when I could
think about anything other than the grass--what new material he could
find for his film. Skyward and downward, to all points of the compass,
holding his cameras at crazy angles, burlesquing all photographers, his
zeal was unabated, unaffected even by the force of the grass.

Our alternating moods underwent a subtle change: the spans of defeat
grew longer, the moments of hope more fleeting. The sheep too at last
were infected by uneasiness, bleating piteously skyward and making no
attempt to nibble any longer. The goat, like Slafe, was unmoved; she
disdained the emotional sheep.

And now with horror I suddenly realized that a physical change had
marched alongside the fluctuations of our temper. The circumference of
the bowl was the same as at first, but imperceptibly yet swiftly the
hollow had deepened, sunk farther from the sky, the walls had become
almost perpendicular and to my terror I found myself looking upward from
the bottom of a pit at the retreating sky.

I suppose everyone at some time has imagined himself irrevocably
imprisoned, cast into some lightless dungeon and left to die. Such
visions implied human instrumentality, human whim; the most implacable
jailer might relent.