The sensations died away.  There was a brief interval, and then the streaming, starlike skeleton rose up again out of space.  It changed to the red-blood system.  The hard parts of the body reappeared, with more and more distinctness, and at the same time the network of blood grew fainter.  Presently the interior parts were entirely concealed by the crust—­the creature stood opposite Maskull in its old formidable ugliness, hard, painted, and concrete.

Disliking something about him, the crustacean turned aside and stumbled awkwardly away on its six legs, with laborious and repulsive movements, toward the other bank of the stream.

Maskull’s apathy left him after this adventure.  He became uneasy and thoughtful.  He imagined that he was beginning to see things through Digrung’s eyes, and that there were strange troubles immediately ahead.  The next time his eyes started to blur, he fought it down with his will, and nothing happened.

The valley ascended with many windings toward the hills.  It narrowed considerably, and the wooded slopes on either side grew steeper and higher.  The stream shrunk to about twenty feet across, but it was deeper—­it was alive with motion, music, and bubbles.  The electric sensations caused by its water became more pronounced, almost disagreeably so; but there was nowhere else to walk.  With its deafening confusion of sounds from the multitude of living creatures, the little valley resembled a vast conversation hall of Nature.  The life was still more prolific than before; every square foot of space was a tangle of struggling wills, both animal and vegetable.  For a naturalist it would have been paradise, for no two shapes were alike, and all were fantastic, with individual character.

It looked as if life forms were being coined so fast by Nature that there was not physical room for all.  Nevertheless it was not as on Earth, where a hundred seeds are scattered in order that one may be sown.  Here the young forms seemed to survive, while, to find accommodation for them, the old ones perished; everywhere he looked they were withering and dying, without any ostensible cause—­they were simply being killed by new life.

Other creatures sported so wildly, in front of his very eyes, that they became of different “kingdoms” altogether.  For example, a fruit was lying on the ground, of the size and shape of a lemon, but with a tougher skin.  He picked it up, intending to eat the contained pulp; but inside it was a fully formed young tree, just on the point of bursting its shell.  Maskull threw it away upstream.  It floated back toward him; by the time he was even with it, its downward motion had stopped and it was swimming against the current.  He fished it out and discovered that it had sprouted six rudimentary legs.