Before putting his foot to the water, he turned things over a little in his mind.

He said, “What themes are in common music, shapes are in this music.  The composer does not find his theme by picking out single notes; but the whole theme flashes into his mind by inspiration.  So it must be with shapes.  When I start playing, if I am worth anything, the undivided ideas will pass from my unconscious mind to this lake, and then, reflected back in the dimensions of reality, I shall be for the first time made acquainted with them.  So it must be.”

The instant his foot touched the water, he felt his thoughts flowing from him.  He did not know what they were, but the mere act of flowing created a sensation of joyful mastery.  With this was curiosity to learn what they would prove to be.  Spouts formed on the lake in increasing numbers, but he experienced no pain.  His thoughts, which he knew to be music, did not issue from him in a steady, unbroken stream, but in great, rough gushes, succeeding intervals of quiescence.  When these gushes came, the whole lake broke out in an eruption of spouts.

He realised that the ideas passing from him did not arise in his intellect, but had their source in the fathomless depths of his will.  He could not decide what character they should have, but he was able to force them out, or retard them, by the exercise of his volition.

At first nothing changed around him.  Then the moon grew dimmer, and a strange, new radiance began to illuminate the landscape.  It increased so imperceptibly that it was some time before he recognised it as the Muspel-light which he had seen in the Wombflash Forest.  He could not give it a colour, or a name, but it filled him with a sort of stern and sacred awe.  He called up the resources of his powerful will.  The spouts thickened like a forest, and many of them were twenty feet high.  Teargeld looked faint and pale; the radiance became intense; but it cast no shadows.  The wind got up, but where Maskull was sitting, it was calm.  Shortly afterward it began to shriek and whistle, like a full gale.  He saw no shapes, and redoubled his efforts.

His ideas were now rushing out onto the lake so furiously that his whole soul was possessed by exhilaration and defiance.  But still he did not know their nature.  A huge spout shot up and at the same moment the hills began to crack and break.  Great masses of loose soil were erupted from their bowels, and in the next period of quietness, he saw that the landscape had altered.  Still the mysterious light intensified.  The moon disappeared entirely.  The noise of the unseen tempest was terrifying, but Maskull played heroically on, trying to urge out ideas which would take shape.  The hillsides were cleft with chasms.  The water escaping from the tops of the spouts, swamped the land; but where he was, it was dry.

The radiance grew terrible.  It was everywhere, but Maskull fancied that it was far brighter in one particular quarter.  He thought that it was becoming localised, preparatory to contracting into a solid form.  He strained and strained....