covered half the distance that lay between.  And still, I was borne helplessly to meet it.  Only a hundred yards, and the brutish ferocity of the giant face numbed me with a feeling of unmitigated horror.  I could have screamed, in the supremeness of my fear; and then, in the very moment of my extremity and despair, I became conscious that I was looking down upon the arena, from a rapidly increasing height.  I was rising, rising.  In an inconceivably short while, I had reached an altitude of many hundred feet.  Beneath me, the spot that I had just left, was occupied by the foul Swine-creature.  It had gone down on all fours and was snuffing and rooting, like a veritable hog, at the surface of the arena.  A moment and it rose to its feet, clutching upward, with an expression of desire upon its face such as I have never seen in this world.

Continually, I mounted higher.  A few minutes, it seemed, and I had risen above the great mountains—­floating, alone, afar in the redness.  At a tremendous distance below, the arena showed, dimly; with the mighty House looking no larger than a tiny spot of green.  The Swine-thing was no longer visible.

Presently, I passed over the mountains, out above the huge breadth of the plain.  Far away, on its surface, in the direction of the ring-shaped sun, there showed a confused blur.  I looked toward it, indifferently.  It reminded me, somewhat, of the first glimpse I had caught of the mountain-amphitheatre.

With a sense of weariness, I glanced upward at the immense ring of fire.  What a strange thing it was!  Then, as I stared, out from the dark center, there spurted a sudden flare of extraordinary vivid fire.  Compared with the size of the black center, it was as naught; yet, in itself, stupendous.  With awakened interest, I watched it carefully, noting its strange boiling and glowing.  Then, in a moment, the whole thing grew dim and unreal, and so passed out of sight.  Much amazed, I glanced down to the Plain from which I was still rising.  Thus, I received a fresh surprise.  The Plain—­everything had vanished, and only a sea of red mist was spread far below me.  Gradually as I stared this grew remote, and died away into a dim far mystery of red against an unfathomable night.  A while, and even this had gone, and I was wrapped in an impalpable, lightless gloom.

IV

THE EARTH

Thus I was, and only the memory that I had lived through the dark, once before, served to sustain my thoughts.  A great time passed—­ages.  And then a single star broke its way through the darkness.  It was the first of one of the outlying clusters of this universe.  Presently, it was far behind, and all about me shone the splendor of the countless stars.  Later, years it seemed, I saw the sun, a clot of flame.  Around it, I made out presently several remote specks of light—­the planets of the Solar system.  And so I saw the earth again, blue and unbelievably minute.  It grew larger, and became defined.