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And he turned neither to the right hand nor the left, till he came to the Unshapen Land, and the place which has no name.
Green reeds grew along the margin, and green iris leaves, like sword blades, black now in the failing light. There was a studied roughness in the tiny landscape, and in the midst of the wilderness a little hut. "What a sweet little summer-house!" cried Asako. It looked like a settler's shack, built of rough, unshapen logs and thatched with rushes.
After a row of an hour up this channel, made interesting and impressive by the magnificent colonnades of princely pines, that, as far as the eye could reach, stood towering away in lessening perspective along its banks, they suddenly emerged into the bright and far-stretching waters of the unmapped Oquossak, which lay nestling and inflected among the dark green cliffs of the boldly intersecting mountains, like some rough, unshapen gem, gleaming out from the rubbish of a mine.
They came in sight of a squalid settlement, built raggedly about a blacksmith's shop and a saloon. The thought of what might issue from it by night was unpleasant, and the legends of the Cross-Roads, together with an unshapen threat, easily fancied in the atmosphere of the place, made Miss Sherwood shiver as though a cold draught had crossed her. "It is so sinister!" she exclaimed.
In one second the drudge could be transformed into the elegant infanta of boudoirs, and vice versa. To suit the coquetry of the age the pinafore was enriched with certain flouncings, which, however, only intensified its unshapen ugliness. On a plain, middle-aged woman such a pinafore would have been intolerable to the sensitive eye.
Christianity, rising with the zeal and strength of youth out of the ruins of the Empire, and feudalism by the need of self-preservation imposing a form upon the unshapen associations of the barbarians, had between them compacted the foundations and reared the fabric of mediæval life.
'Perseus, said Athene, 'think well before you attempt; for this deed requires a seven years' journey, in which you cannot repent or turn back nor escape; but if your heart fails you, you must die in the Unshapen Land, where no man will ever find your bones. 'Better so than live here, useless and despised, said Perseus.
Because he accepteth not the Divine Promise of Him who is the Light unspeakable, and carrieth his doubt with him unto Paradise, therefore the shut flower of his heart openeth not, therefore is he unshapen as a child in the womb.
And at last they put the hat upon his head, and he vanished out of their sight. But Perseus went on boldly, past many an ugly sight, far away into the heart of the Unshapen Land, till he heard the rustle of the Gorgons' wings and saw the glitter of their brazen talons; and then he knew that it was time to halt, lest Medusa should freeze him into stone.
In point of size and weight his thirty-fourth day found him pretty much on a level with a fully grown fox-terrier; though he was, of course, still quite unshapen, and somewhat insecure upon his thick, gristly legs. "He's going to be a slashing big hound, Betty," said the Master, after weighing Jan. "And I think he's going to do you credit in every way.
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