The shore loomed nearer and nearer.  In physical character it was like Swaylone’s Island—­the same wide sands, small cliffs, and rounded, insignificant hills inland, without vegetation.  In the early-morning sunlight, however, it looked romantic.  Maskull, hollow-eyed and morose, cared nothing for all that, but the moment the tree grounded, clambered swiftly down through the branches and dropped into the sea.  By the time he had swam ashore, the white, stupendous sun was high above the horizon.

He walked along the sands toward the east for a considerable distance, without having any special intention in his mind.  He thought he would go on until he came to some creek or valley, and then turn up it.  The sun’s rays were cheering, and began to relieve him of his oppressive night weight.  After strolling along the beach for about a mile, he was stopped by a broad stream that flowed into the sea out of a kind of natural gateway in the line of cliffs.  Its water was of a beautiful, limpid green, all filled with bubbles.  So ice-cold, aerated, and enticing did it look that he flung himself face downward on the ground and took a prolonged draught.  When he got up again his eyes started to play pranks—­they became alternately blurted and clear....  It may have been pure imagination, but he fancied that Digrung was moving inside him.

He followed the bank of the stream through the gap in the cliffs, and then for the first time saw the real Matterplay.  A valley appeared, like a jewel enveloped by naked rock.  All the hill country was bare and lifeless, but this valley lying in the heart of it was extremely fertile; he had never seen such fertility.  It wound up among the hills, and all that he was looking at was its broad lower end.  The floor of the valley was about half a mile wide; the stream that ran down its middle was nearly a hundred feet across, but was exceedingly shallow—­in most places not more than a few inches deep.  The sides of the valley were about seventy feet high, but very sloping; they were clothed from top to bottom with little, bright-leaved trees—­ not of varied tints of one colour, like Earth trees, but of widely diverse colours, most of which were brilliant and positive.

The floor itself was like a magician’s garden.  Densely interwoven trees, shrubs, and parasitical climbers fought everywhere for possession of it.  The forms were strange and grotesque, and each one seemed different; the colours of leaf, flower, sexual organs, and stem were equally peculiar—­all the different combinations of the five primary colours of Tormance seemed to be represented, and the result, for Maskull was a sort of eye chaos.  So rank was the vegetation that he could not fight his way through it; he was obliged to take to the riverbed.  The contact of the water created an odd tingling sensation throughout his body, like a mild electric shock.  There were no birds, but a few extraordinary-looking