I glanced downwards. We had now risen again to
a considerable height. We were flying over some
provincial town I did not know, situated on the side
of a wide slope. Churches rose up high among the
dark mass of wooden roofs and orchards; a long bridge
stood out black at the bend of a river; everything
was hushed, buried in slumber. The very crosses
and cupolas seemed to gleam with a silent brilliance;
silently stood the tall posts of the wells beside
the round tops of the willows; silently the straight
whitish road darted arrow-like into one end of the
town, and silently it ran out again at the opposite
end on to the dark waste of monotonous fields.
‘What town is this?’ I asked.
‘X....’
‘X ... in Y ... province?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m a long distance indeed from home!’
‘Distance is not for us.’
‘Really?’ I was fired by a sudden recklessness.
’Then take me to South America!
‘To America I cannot. It’s daylight
there by now.’ ’And we are night-birds.
Well, anywhere, where you can, only far, far away.’
‘Shut your eyes and hold your breath,’
answered Alice, and we flew along with the speed of
a whirlwind. With a deafening noise the air rushed
into my ears. We stopped, but the noise did not
cease. On the contrary, it changed into a sort
of menacing roar, the roll of thunder...
‘Now you can open your eyes,’ said Alice.
I obeyed ... Good God, where was I?
Overhead, ponderous, smoke-like storm-clouds; they
huddled, they moved on like a herd of furious monsters
... and there below, another monster; a raging, yes,
raging, sea ... The white foam gleamed with spasmodic
fury, and surged up in hillocks upon it, and hurling
up shaggy billows, it beat with a sullen roar against
a huge cliff, black as pitch. The howling of the
tempest, the chilling gasp of the storm-rocked abyss,
the weighty splash of the breakers, in which from
time to time one fancied something like a wail, like
distant cannon-shots, like a bell ringing—the
tearing crunch and grind of the shingle on the beach,
the sudden shriek of an unseen gull, on the murky
horizon the disabled hulk of a ship—on every
side death, death and horror.... Giddiness overcame
me, and I shut my eyes again with a sinking heart....
‘What is this? Where are we?’
’On the south coast of the Isle of Wight opposite
the Blackgang cliff where ships are so often wrecked,’
said Alice, speaking this time with peculiar distinctness,
and as it seemed to me with a certain malignant pleasure....
‘Take me away, away from here ... home! home!’
I shrank up, hid my face in my hands ... I felt
that we were moving faster than before; the wind now
was not roaring or moaning, it whistled in my hair,
in my clothes ... I caught my breath ...
‘Stand on your feet now,’ I heard Alice’s
voice saying. I tried to master myself, to regain
consciousness ... I felt the earth under the soles
of my feet, and I heard nothing, as though everything
had swooned away about me ... only in my temples the
blood throbbed irregularly, and my head was still
giddy with a faint ringing in my ears. I drew
myself up and opened my eyes.
