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Updated: April 30, 2025
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart, Built of brown stone, without a counterpart In the whole world. lost in despair at an all-encircling mystery. Not so the Greek Childe Roland who set the slug-horn to his lips and blew a challenge.
For a while Oswald seems quietly sleeping, then in confused accents mutters, and starting up, calls out: "'Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set And blew; Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." These quotations fall upon the ears of priest and Sister of Charity with awfully solemn accents. They feel in presence of double mystery of life and death.
My cell-mate was wise in the ways of the beasts. Like Childe Roland, dauntless the slug-horn to his lips he bore. Never was there such a battle. It lasted for hours. It was shambles. And when the last survivors fled to their brick-and-mortar fastnesses, our work was only half done. We chewed mouthfuls of our bread until it was reduced to the consistency of putty.
There they stood, ranged along the hillside, met To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set. And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." There, if anywhere in literature, is the summit of tragic and triumphant music.
Then Ato gave the signal, standing lean and tall in the control room, with a tight belt about his narrow waist, and Wolden's slug-horn fastened securely to it. The Nebula leaped toward the star-studded skies. Odin watched the moon disappear below them.
Hours later Gunnar and Odin sat with Ato in his quarters, making some last-minute decisions. There was a knock at the door. Wolden entered, carrying a strange-looking slug-horn that glimmered like mother-of-pearl. "I want you to take this with you," he begged his son. "It is made of the Moon-Metal. I think I know its secret now. A vibration that defies a vacuum.
He stumbled and went down to his knees. Then he struggled up, and as he stood straight he reached down to his waist and clutched the little slug-horn of moon-metal that his father had given him. His head went back as he raised the horn to his lips. Like Childe Roland, who came at last to the Dark Tower, he blew one unheard blast.
Bassett pondered, remembering his Browning and gazing at his skeleton-like and fever-wasted hands. And the fancy made him smile of Childe Roland bearing a slug-horn to his lips with an arm as feeble as his was. Was it months, or years, he asked himself, since he first heard that mysterious call on the beach at Ringmanu? To save himself he could not tell. The long sickness had been most long.
I hope to perfect my work, but I may not. Here," he offered the tiny horn to his son. "Blow it if you need me. It is soundless, but it defies time and space just as my work does. I carry a ring to match it. I may not succeed. But blow it when you need me, son, and if I can I'll be there " Tears were in the eyes of both when Ato took the slug-horn from his father.
Easy and smooth was their way over this pleasant wilderness, and clear to see, though but little used, and before nightfall, after they had gone a long way, they came to a house. It was not large nor high, but was built very strongly and fairly of good ashlar: its door was shut, and on the jamb thereof hung a slug-horn.
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