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.He had seen neither fruit nor gourd on the Fixed Land.Perhaps it was a death trap.He smiled bitterly at the folly which had made him so glad, that morning, to exchange those floatingparadises, where every grove dropped sweetness, for this barren rock.But perhaps it was not barren afterall.Determined, despite the weariness which was every moment descending upon him, to make a searchfor food, he was just turning inland when the swift changes of colour that announce the evening of thatworld overtook him.Uselessly he quickened his pace.Before he had got down into the valley, the grovewhere he had left Weston was a mere cloud of darkness.Before he had reached it he was in seamless,undimensioned night.An effort or two to grope his way to the place where Weston's stores had beendeposited only served to abolish his sense of direction altogether.He sat down perforce.He calledWeston's name aloud once or twice but, as he expected, received no answer.'I'm glad I removed his gun,all the same,' thought Ransom; and then, 'Well, qui dort dine.and I suppose I must make the best of ittill the morning.' When he lay down he discovered that the solid earth and moss of the Fixed Land wasvery much less comfortable than the surfaces to which he had lately been accustomed.That, and thethought of the other human being lying, no doubt, close at hand with open eyes and teeth clenched onsplintered glass, and the sullen recurring pound of breakers on the beach, all made the night comfortless."If I lived on Perelandra," he muttered, "Maleldil wouldn't need to forbid this island.I wish I'd never seteyes on it."file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw./spaar/C.%20S.%20Lewis%20-%20Voyage%20to%20Venus.txt (48 of 115)19-2-2006 4:46:17file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20documenten/spaar/C.%20S.%20Lewis%20-%20Voyage%20to%20Venus.txtChapter EightHE woke, after a disturbed and dreamful sleep, in full daylight.He had a dry mouth, a crick in his neck,and a soreness in his limbs.It was so unlike all previous wakings in the world of Venus, that for amoment he supposed himself back on Earth:and the dream (for so it seemed to him) of having lived and walked on the oceans of the Morning Starrushed through his memory with a sense of lost sweetness that was well-nigh unbearable.Then he sat upand the facts came back to him.'It's jolly nearly the same as having waked from a dream, though,' hethought.Hunger and thirst became at once his dominant sensations, but he conceived it a duty to lookfirst at the sick man-though with very little hope that he could help him.He gazed round.There was thegrove of silvery trees all right, but he could not see Weston.Then he glanced at the bay;there was no punt either.Assuming that in the darkness he had blundered into the wrong valley, he roseand approached the stream for a drink.As he lifted his face from the water with a long sigh ofsatisfaction, his eyes suddenly fell on a little wooden box-and then beyond it on a couple of tins.Hisbrain was working rather slowly and it took him a few seconds to realise that he was in the right valleyafter all, and a few more to draw conclusions from the fact that the box was open and empty, and thatsome of the stores had been removed and others left behind.But was it possible that a man in Weston'sphysical condition could have recovered sufficiently during the night to strike camp and to go awayladen with some kind of pack? Was it possible that any man could have faced a sea like that in acollapsible punt? It was true, as he now noticed for the first time, that the storm (which had been a meresquall by Perelandrian standards) appeared to have blown itself out during the night; but there was still aquite formidable swell and it seemed out of the question that the Professor could have left the island.Much more probably he had left the valley on foot and carried the punt with him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]