aid I; "the world into which we are born is our true
habitat."

The walls of the canyon grew wider apart until we floated in a valley
two miles wide. The meadow land below us was carpeted with grass and
covered with clumps of forest trees, down the middle of which ran the
river, green and swift. The walls of the valley here rose twelve
thousand feet in perpendicular height, prodigies of stone, stained in
barbaric colors by the brushes of the ages. Here and there triumphant
cataracts flashed from the heights and fell in torrents of foam to the
valley below. Sometimes a tributary of the river dashed furiously
from the battlements above us into the abyss, flinging clouds of spray
on the tops of the trees beneath.

[Illustration: THE GODDESS STOOD HOLDING THE OUTER RAIL OF THE DECK,
THE INCARNATION OF COURAGE.]

The _Aeropher_ maintained a uniform height of five thousand feet,
sufficiently high to give us the exultation of a bird, yet
sufficiently deep to allow the sublimity of the scene to fully impress
us.

The musicians, who had hitherto remained in abeyance, now broke the
silence of our progress with a swelling refrain. The music rolled
echoing from granite to jasper walls in strains of divine pathos. We
seemed to sail through the fabled realms of enchantment. In that
little moving heaven, ceremony was dissolved into a thrilling
friendship; the harmonious surroundings created a closer union of
souls.

Above where I sat with Lyone there floated a flag of yellow silk a
hundred feet in length. As it floated on the wind it assumed a varying
series of poetic shapes, very beautiful to witness.

Sometimes there was a long sinuous fold, then a number of rippling
waves, then a second fold only shorter than the first, then more
rippling waves. It was a symbol of the soul and of the goddess, and
represented the fascination and poetry that belongs to the adepts of
Harikar. Its folds changed momentarily. At times there would be one
large central curve like a Moorish arch, flanked on either side by a
number of lesser arches. Again the flag streamed in throbbing waves,
frequently blown by an intense breath of wind straight as a spear,
crackling and shivering like a soul in pain. It responded not only to
the motion of the ship, but had an independent life of its own.

"You see," said Lyone, "that the spiritual part of our creed is but
the development of this independent life of the soul. The spiritual
nature responds to the o