l him. A blight
seemed to hang upon everything, and a dread that had no form but that
pressed on him grew as he went.

He came at last to the marshy bottom of the valley, where the wet and
tussocky grass was set in a tangle of blackberry bushes and bracken
higher than a man. A few forlorn tufts of cotton-grass still blew out in
the languid breeze and the yellow stars of the cinquefoil shone from the
moss, but disfigured by the dozens of evil-looking black slugs, three or
four inches long, that lay motionless all over the marsh. A faint,
subtle smell hung on the air, the fragrance of the dodder, that covered
the gorse bushes with a fine vermilion net, studded with pale pink
flowers like fat flesh-coloured flies caught in a vast red spider's web.
The whole place seemed redolent of evil--the motionless glossy slugs,
the deadly parasite with its curiously obscene flowers, the littered
undergrowth rotting in the water, all these filled Ishmael with a
suffocating sense of doom. He stayed at gaze, yet longing to get away
from this steamy place, where the gorse had gone grey beneath the false
embraces of the dodder.

At last he turned and climbed slowly up the valley side; when he reached
the top he had to pause and lean upon a gate to get his breath. His
heart was pounding in his ears. He did not look up; for a few minutes
the world was dark and filled with a great roaring. Then he felt his
breath coming more easily and the giddiness passed; he opened his eyes
and straightened himself.

He opened them on to the wide stretch of sky that arched over the sea,
and there he saw, stretched from headland to headland, one gleaming foot
springing from an irradiated field, the other dying into a swirl of
misty foam, a perfect arch of rainbow. It was so triumphant, so
brilliant, so unexpected, that at first he stood staring, his mouth
open, his whistling breath coming unheeded.

A rainbow alone in Nature always looks an alien thing--it is never part
of a landscape, but the added touch which means wonder. Like snow, it is
always a phenomenon. It has never lost the quality of miracle.

Far below the glowing span lay Cloom, wet grey roofs gleaming, and a
dazzle of sun upon its whitewash; around the fields lay like a jewelled
canopy, lighter than the sky, which still wore a deep purple-grey,
against which the arch burned like fire.

As Ishmael looked the tears swam in his eyes, making the whole radiant
vision reel and run together in