The Metal Monster [117]
the City.
The giant slide was broken and climbable. But even if we could have passed safely through the tunnel of the abyss there still was left the chasm over which we could have thrown no bridge. And if we could have bridged it still at that road's end was the cliff whose shaft Norhala had sealed with her lightnings.
So we entered the rift.
Of our wanderings thereafter I need not write. From the rift we emerged into a maze of the valleys, and after
a month in that wilderness, living upon what game we could shoot, we found a road that led us into Gyantse.
In another six weeks we were home in America.
My story is finished.
There in the Trans-Himalayan wilderness is the blue globe that was the weird home of the lightning witch--and looking back I feel now she could not have been all woman.
There is the vast pit with its coronet of fantastic peaks; its symboled, calcined floor and the crumbling body of the inexplicable, the incredible Thing which, alive, was the shadow of extinction, annihilation, hovering to hurl itself upon humanity. That shadow is gone; that pall withdrawn.
But to me--to each of us four who saw those phenomena-- their lesson remains, ineradicable; giving a new strength and purpose to us, teaching us a new humility.
For in that vast crucible of life of which we are so small a part, what other Shapes may even now be rising to submerge us?
In that vast reservoir of force that is the mystery-filled infinite through which we roll, what other shadows may be speeding upon us?
Who knows?
End
The giant slide was broken and climbable. But even if we could have passed safely through the tunnel of the abyss there still was left the chasm over which we could have thrown no bridge. And if we could have bridged it still at that road's end was the cliff whose shaft Norhala had sealed with her lightnings.
So we entered the rift.
Of our wanderings thereafter I need not write. From the rift we emerged into a maze of the valleys, and after
a month in that wilderness, living upon what game we could shoot, we found a road that led us into Gyantse.
In another six weeks we were home in America.
My story is finished.
There in the Trans-Himalayan wilderness is the blue globe that was the weird home of the lightning witch--and looking back I feel now she could not have been all woman.
There is the vast pit with its coronet of fantastic peaks; its symboled, calcined floor and the crumbling body of the inexplicable, the incredible Thing which, alive, was the shadow of extinction, annihilation, hovering to hurl itself upon humanity. That shadow is gone; that pall withdrawn.
But to me--to each of us four who saw those phenomena-- their lesson remains, ineradicable; giving a new strength and purpose to us, teaching us a new humility.
For in that vast crucible of life of which we are so small a part, what other Shapes may even now be rising to submerge us?
In that vast reservoir of force that is the mystery-filled infinite through which we roll, what other shadows may be speeding upon us?
Who knows?
End