He opened his eyes.  The floating island was still faintly illuminated by Alppain.  Krag was standing by his side, but Gangnet was no longer there.

“What is this Ocean called?” asked Maskull, bringing out the words with difficulty.

“Surtur’s Ocean.”

Maskull nodded, and kept quiet for some time.  He rested his face on his arm.  “Where’s Nightspore?” he asked suddenly.

Krag bent over him with a grave expression.  “You are Nightspore.”

The dying man closed his eyes, and smiled.

Opening them again, a few moments later, with an effort, he murmured,
“Who are you?”

Krag maintained a gloomy silence.

Shortly afterward a frightful pang passed through Maskull’s heart, and he died immediately.

Krag turned his head around.  “The night is really past at last,
Nightspore....  The day is here.”

Nightspore gazed long and earnestly at Maskull’s body.  “Why was all this necessary?”

“Ask Crystalman,” replied Krag sternly.  “His world is no joke.  He has a strong clutch—­but I have a stronger...  Maskull was his, but Nightspore is mine.”

Chapter 21

MUSPEL

The fog thickened so that the two suns wholly disappeared, and all grew as black as night.  Nightspore could no longer see his companion.  The water lapped gently against the side of the island raft.

“You say the night is past,” said Nightspore.  “But the night is still here.  Am I dead, or alive?”

“You are still in Crystalman’s world, but you belong to it no more.  We are approaching Muspel.”

Nightspore felt a strong, silent throbbing of the air—­a rhythmical pulsation, in four-four time.  “There is the drumming,” he exclaimed.

“Do you understand it, or have you forgotten?”

“I half understand it, but I’m all confused.”

“It’s evident Crystalman has dug his claws into you pretty deeply,” said Krag.  “The sound comes from Muspel, but the rhythm is caused by its travelling through Crystalman’s atmosphere.  His nature is rhythm as he loves to call it—­or dull, deadly repetition, as I name it.”

“I remember,” said Nightspore, biting his nails in the dark.

The throbbing became audible; it now sounded like a distant drum.  A small patch of strange light in the far distance, straight ahead of them, began faintly to illuminate the floating island and the glassy sea around it.

“Do all men escape from that ghastly world, or only I, and a few like me?” asked Nightspore.

“If all escaped, I shouldn’t sweat, my friend...  There’s hard work, and anguish, and the risk of total death, waiting for us yonder.”

Nightspore’s heart sank.  “Have I not yet finished, then?”

“If you wish it.  You have got through.  But will you wish it?”

The drumming grew loud and painful.  The light resolved itself into a tiny oblong of mysterious brightness in a huge wall of night.  Krag’s grim and rocklike features were revealed.