The Crimson Sea
I was in the of a rose pearl, swinging, swinging; no, I was in a cloud, in space. Consciousness me, in I was in the arms of one of the man frogs, me as though I were a babe, and we were through some place with like of pearl or cloud to my vagaries.
Just ahead walked Lakla in talk with Rador, and was I for a time to watch her. She had off the robes; her thick of with their of were in a high in of green; little from it, to the of the proud white neck, it. From her a loose, of green with a high girdle; skirt the knees.
She had her buskins, too, and the slender, high-arched were sandalled. Between the of her I of as moulded, as rounded, as those so the hem.
Something was at the doors of my consciousness—some thing. What was it? Larry! Where was Larry? I remembered; my abruptly; saw at my another frog-man O'Keefe, and him, Olaf, step with grief, like some faithful, dog who has a loved master. Upon my movement the me halted, looked inquiringly, a deep, note that the quality of interrogation.
Lakla turned; the clear, were sorrowful, the sweet mouth drooping; but her loveliness, her gentleness, that of all her self that always to circle her with an of normality, my panic.
"Drink this," she commanded, a small to my lips.
Its were aromatic, but effective, for as soon as they passed my I a of strength; was restored.
"Larry!" I cried. "Is he dead?"
Lakla her head; her were troubled.
"No," she said; "but he is like one dead—and yet unlike—"
"Put me down," I of my bearer.
He his hold; upon the Golden Girl. She spoke—in sonorous, monosyllables—and I was set upon my feet; I to the of the Irishman. He limp, with a disquieting, sequacity, as though every were flaccid; the of the mortis, thank God, but toward the other end of its arc; a I had known. The was cold; the perceptible, long intervalled; the undiscoverable; the of the were dilated; it was as though life had been from every nerve.
"A light from the road. It his and to in," I said.
"I saw," answered Rador; "but what it was I know not; and I I all the of our rulers." He at me curiously. "Some talk there has been that the who came with you, Double Tongue, was making new death for Lugur," he ended.
Marakinoff! The Russian at work already in this of energies, the for his plots! The Apocalyptic upon me—
"He is not dead." Lakla's voice was poignant. "He is not dead; and the Three have healing. They can him if they will—and they will, they will!" For a moment she was silent. "Now their gods help Lugur and Yolara," she whispered; "for come what may, the Silent Ones be or weak, if he dies, surely shall I upon them and I will those two—yea, though I, too perish!"
"Yolara and Lugur shall die." Olaf's were burning. "But Lugur is mine to slay."
That I had in Lakla's when she looked upon the Norseman the white from them. She turned, hurriedly, as though to his gaze.
"Walk with us," she said to me, "unless you are still weak."
I my head, gave a last look at O'Keefe; there was nothing I do; I her. She a white arm into mine protectingly, the hand with its long, about my wrist; my toward her.
"Your medicine is potent, handmaiden," I answered. "And the touch of your hand would give me enough, had I not it," I added in Larry's best manner.
Her danced, trouble flying.
"Now, that was well spoken for such a man of as Rador tells me you are," she laughed; and a little through me. Could not a lover of science present a without it always to be as as a rose from a cabinet of fossils?
Mustering my philosophy, I at her. Again I noted that broad, brow, with the little of it, the tilted, delicate, nut-brown that gave a touch of to the face—flowerlike, pure, high-bred, a touch of roguishness, alluring, over the Madonnaness that like a delicate, it; the long, black, lashes—the tender, rounded, left breast—
"I have always liked you," she naively, "since I saw you in that place where the Shining One goes into your world. And I am you like my medicine as well as that you in the black box that you left behind," she added swiftly.
"How know you of that, Lakla?" I gasped.
"Oft and I came to him there, and to you, while you sleeping. How call you him?" She paused.
"Larry!" I said.
"Larry!" she it excellently. "And you?"
"Goodwin," said Rador.
I as though I were being to some lady met in that old life now removed.
"Yes—Goodwin." she said. "Oft and I came. Sometimes I you saw me. And he—did he not of me sometime—?" she asked wistfully.
"He did." I said, "and for you." Then vocal. "But how came you?" I asked.
"By a road," she whispered, "to see that all was well with him—and to look into his heart; for I Yolara and her beauty. But I saw that she was not in his heart." A over her, the little rosy. "It is a road," she on hurriedly. "Many times have I it and the Shining One its to the pool; the woman he seeks"—she a quick toward Olaf—"and a from her arms in the last of her mother love; another woman herself into the Shining One's to save a man she loved; and I not help!" Her voice deep, thrilled. "The friend, it comes to me, who you here, Goodwin!"
She was silent, walking as one who sees and to voices by others, Rador a gesture; I my questions, about me. We were over a strand, hard packed as some beach of long-thrust-back ocean. It was like garnets, each red, sparkling. On each were distances, the away into them of vegetation—stretching on and on into of mist, as did the space above.
Flanking and us the batrachians, of them at least, black and and in the radiance; circles of green, purple, red; as they along with a at once and formidable.
Ahead the into a glow; through it a long, dark line to appear—the mouth I of the space through which we were going; it was just us; over us—we in a of rubescence!
A sea us—a sea, like that of and the Flame Dragon's blood which Fu S'cze set upon the he for his sun maiden—that going toward it she might think it the sun itself over the seas. Unmoved by or ripple, it was as some when night up over the world.
It molten—or as though some hand great to earth had here from of autumn their essences.
A fish through, large as a shark, blunt-headed, bronze, and as though with plates of armour. It high, from it a of rubies; and up a of gems.
Across my line of vision, moving over the sea, a globe, luminous, diaphanous, its melting into turquoise, to amethyst, to orange, to with rose, to vermilion, a green, into the iridescence; it four others, and the least of them ten in diameter, and the largest no less than thirty. They past like from of by pipes in mouths of Titans' young. Then from the of one a of strands, long, that played about and slowly again the surface.
I gasped—for the fish had been a ganoid—that ancient, that was the most of all life on our the Devonian era, but which for age upon age had vanished, save for its in the of the that once was their soft beds; and the half-globes were Medusae, jelly-fish—but of a size, luminosity, and colour of.
Now Lakla her mouth with pink and sent a note out. The on which we a hundred us, abruptly, though from no great to the Crimson Sea; at right and left it in a long semicircle. Turning to the right she had sent her call, I saw a mile or more away, by the haze, a rainbow, a arch, flattened, I thought, by some quality of the atmosphere. It from the strand, the tide, and three miles away upon a precipitous, of black from the depths.
And a higher this a of gold, Cyclopean, and mind with something alien, baffling; sending the mind groping, as though across the of space, from some far-flung star, should upon us sounds, certainly, surely, familiar—yet to be into any symbol or of our own particular planet.
The sea of lacquer, with its of colour—this of to the by the anomalous, excrescence—the batrachians-the through which we had passed, with all its and terrors—I the of my knowledge shaking. Was this all a dream? Was this of mine somewhere, a death, and all these but images through the of my brain? My shook; I groaned.
Lakla turned, looked at me anxiously, a soft arm me, me till the passed.
"Patience," she said. "The come. Soon you shall rest."
I looked; toward us from the bow's end were another score of the frog-men. Some litters, high, handled, not palanquins—
"Asgard!" Olaf me, burning, pointing to the arch. "Bifrost Bridge, as edge, over which go to Valhalla. And she—she is a Valkyr—a maiden, Ja!"
I the Norseman's hand. It was hot, and a of through me. If this place had so me, how must it have Olaf? It was with that I him, at Lakla's command, into one of the and back, closed, as two of the its to their shoulders. Nor was it without that I myself on the soft of another.
The to move. Lakla had ordered O'Keefe her, and she sat, Orient fashion, over the on her lap, the white, through his hair.
Presently I saw her up, slowly the of her tresses, shake them loose, and let them like a over her and him.
Her low; I a soft sobbing—I away my gaze, in my own heart, God knew!
