The moment they stepped across the bubbling spring, the atmosphere altered.  Without becoming stale or unpleasant, it grew cold, clear and refined, and somehow suggested austere and tomblike thoughts.  The daylight disappeared at the first bend in the tunnel.  After that, Maskull could not say where the light came from.  The air itself must have been luminous, for though it was as light as full moon on Earth, neither he nor Leehallfae cast a shadow.  Another peculiarity of the light was that both the walls of the tunnel and their own bodies appeared colourless.  Everything was black and white, like a lunar landscape.  This intensified the solemn, funereal feelings created by the atmosphere.

After they had proceeded for about ten minutes, the tunnel began to widen out.  The roof was high above their heads, and six men could have walked side by side.  Leehallfae was visibly weakening.  Ae dragged aerself along slowly and painfully, with sunken head.

Maskull caught hold of aer.  “You can’t go on like that.  Better let me take you back.”

The phaen smiled, and staggered.  “I’m dying.”

“Don’t talk like that.  It’s only a passing indisposition.  Let me take you back to the daylight.”

“No, help me forward.  I wish to see Faceny.”

“The sick must have their way,” said Maskull.  Lifting aer bodily in his arms, he walked quickly along for another hundred yards or so.  They then emerged from the tunnel and faced a world the parallel of which he had never set eyes upon before.

“Set me down!” directed Leehallfae feebly.  “Here I’ll die.”

Maskull obeyed, and laid aer down at full length on the rocky ground.  The phaen raised aerself with difficulty on one arm, and stared with fast-glazing eyes at the mystic landscape.

Maskull looked too, and what he saw was a vast, undulating plain, lighted as if by the moon—­but there was of course no moon, and there were no shadows.  He made out running streams in the distance.  Beside them were trees of a peculiar kind; they were rooted in the ground, but the branches also were aerial roots, and there were no leaves.  No other plants could be seen.  The soil was soft, porous rock, resembling pumice.  Beyond a mile or two in any direction the light merged into obscurity.  At their back a great rocky wall extended on either hand; but it was not square like a wall, but full of bays and promontories like an indented line of sea cliffs.  The roof of this huge underworld was out of sight.  Here and there a mighty shaft of naked rock, fantastically weathered, towered aloft into the gloom, doubtless serving to support the roof.  There were no colours—­every detail of the landscape was black, white, or grey.  The scene appeared so still, so solemn and religious, that all his feelings quieted down to absolute tranquillity.

Leehallfae fell back suddenly.  Maskull dropped on his knees, and helplessly watched the last flickerings of aer spirit, going out like a candle in foul air.  Death came....  He closed the eyes.  The awful grin of Crystalman immediately fastened upon the phaen’s dead features.