t grew presently to
quietness, and to have back the proper caution of my going. Yet had I
not gone all foolishly, for I had taken the Diskos from my hip, ere
this; so that I possessed it handily.
Now there is one matter which shall seem but a small and natural
occurring unto you; yet was strong upon me in that time; and this thing
was that I did begin now to see the Night Land from the new outlooking
of my distance from the Mighty Pyramid. And it was as that a man of this
day did go from the earth to travel among the stars, and lo! should he
not find them to shift upon his vision; so that the Great Bear and this
and that shaping of the star clusterings, should make a new order, as he
did wander onwards; and so should he find that there was naught that was
truly fixed, as he did before then think; but all to alter according
unto the place whence the looking! And this thing shall be plain unto
you, though no thought be put to the matter; for it is of an evident
verity that doth need not argument to expound. And so shall you have
memory of me, there a-wander among those strange shapings and wonders of
that grim Land, the which I had never but supposed to seem but as my
memory did retain them, from the lookings of all my life within the
Great Redoubt. And so it was; and ever there did this thing and that
open out to a new view, and the Night Land take to itself a constant new
aspect to mine eyes which had never until that time had but the one
fixed vision of the same.
And you shall understand with me how that when, about the fourteenth
hour of that day's travel, I did draw very nigh unto the monstrous
Watcher of the North-West, it did seem so utter strange from this fresh
aspect that I had been like to think that I did see a new Monster. For,
in truth, when I did come at last to creep to within a mile of it, among
the low moss-bushes, I was confounded that the mighty chin did come
forward towards the Great Redoubt, even as the upward part of a vast
cliff, which the sea doth make hollow about the bottom; for it did hang
out into the air above the glare of the fire from the Red Pit, as it had
been a thing of Rock, all scored and be-weathered, and dull red and
seeming burned and blasted by reason of the bloody shine that beat
upward from the deep of the Red Pit.
And by the way in which I do tell upon it, you shall know that I did
surely view it something from the side at this immediate time; for, in
truth, it was then th
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