I Spoke To
Her, And She Complained About The Antic Behaviour Of The Land.
We walked across a spacious, wonderful lawn and down an avenue of
royal palms, and across more wonderful lawn in the gracious shade of
stately trees.
The air was filled with the songs of birds and was
heavy with rich warm fragrances - wafture from great lilies, and
blazing blossoms of hibiscus, and other strange gorgeous tropic
flowers. The dream was becoming almost impossibly beautiful to us
who for so long had seen naught but the restless, salty sea.
Charmian reached out her hand and clung to me - for support against
the ineffable beauty of it, thought I. But no. As I supported her
I braced my legs, while the flowers and lawns reeled and swung
around me. It was like an earthquake, only it quickly passed
without doing any harm. It was fairly difficult to catch the land
playing these tricks. As long as I kept my mind on it, nothing
happened. But as soon as my attention was distracted, away it went,
the whole panorama, swinging and heaving and tilting at all sorts of
angles. Once, however, I turned my head suddenly and caught that
stately line of royal palms swinging in a great arc across the sky.
But it stopped, just as soon as I caught it, and became a placid
dream again.
Next we came to a house of coolness, with great sweeping veranda,
where lotus-eaters might dwell. Windows and doors were wide open to
the breeze, and the songs and fragrances blew lazily in and out.
The walls were hung with tapa-cloths.
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