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"Now that we are alone in a strange place," said Gleameil, averting her head, and looking down over the side of the raft into the water, "tell me what you thought of Polecrab." Maskull paused before answering. "He seemed to me like a mountain wrapped in cloud. You see the lower buttresses, and think that is all.
Sit down again, stranger and you too, wife, since you are here." They both obeyed. "I heard everything," repeated Gleameil. "But what I did not hear was where you are going to, Maskull, after you have left us." "I know no more than you do." "Listen, then. There's only one place for you to go to, and that is Swaylone's Island. I will ferry you across myself before sunset."
"I shall come back, and make amends to you. It's only for a night." Maskull gazed from one to the other in perplexity. "Let me go alone. I would be sorry if anything happened." Gleameil shook her head. "Don't regard this as a woman's caprice," she said. "Even if you hadn't passed this way, I would have heard that music soon. I have a hunger for it." "Haven't you any such feeling, Polecrab?" "No.
"Yes," replied Gleameil, gazing at him intently. "When Teargeld rises, which is our moon." "If Earthrid plays men to death, it appears to me that his own death is due. In any case I should like to hear those sounds for myself. But as for taking you with me, Gleameil women die too easily in Tormance. I have only just now washed myself clean of the death blood of another woman."
Without appearing to care about an answer, he sat up, and turning away from them, began to scoop up the loose soil with his hand, and to eat it halfheartedly. "Now, how can you eat that filth?" demanded Maskull, in disgust. "Don't be angry, Maskull," said Gleameil, laying hold of his arm, and flushing a little. "It is Earthrid the man who is to help us." "He has not said so."
Again, speaking of Gleameil, she remarked, "That grand-souled girl I admire the most of all. She listened to her inner voice, and to nothing else besides. Which of us others is strong enough for that?" When his tale was quite over, Sullenbode said, "Does it not strike you, Maskull, that these women you have met have been far nobler than the men?" "I recognise that.
The raft immediately began to travel swiftly away from land, with a smooth, swaying motion. The boys waved from the shore. Gleameil responded; but Maskull turned his back squarely to land, and gazed ahead. Polecrab was wading back to the shore. For upward of an hour Maskull did not change his position by an inch.
That same beauty which you and I are now voyaging to discover. That beauty for whose sake I am renouncing husband, children, and happiness.... Did you imagine beauty to be pleasant?" "Surely." "That pleasant beauty is an insipid compound of Shaping. To see beauty in its terrible purity, you must tear away the pleasure from it." "Do you say I am going to seek beauty, Gleameil?
But when, over the now enlarged shape of the dark island, he caught sight of a long chain of lofty, distant mountains, glowing salmon-pink in the evening sunlight, he felt constrained to break the silence by inquiring what they were. "It is Lichstorm," said Gleameil.
The eldest boy bit his lip till it bled, and tears glistened in his eyes; but the younger children stared wide-eyed, and displayed no emotion. Gleameil now walked into the sea, followed by Maskull. The water covered first their ankles, then their knees, but when it came as high as their waists, they were close on the raft.
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