Directly he did so, he realised that he had been tricked, and that this ride had been planned for one purpose only—­to inflame his desires.

The third arm possessed a function of its own, of which hitherto he had been ignorant.  It was a developed magn.  But the stream of love which was communicated to it was no longer pure and noble—­it was boiling, passionate, and torturing.  He gritted his teeth, and kept quiet, but Oceaxe had not plotted the adventure to remain unconscious of his feelings.  She looked around, with a golden, triumphant smile.  “The ride will last some time, so hold on well!” Her voice was soft like a flute, but rather malicious.

Maskull grinned, and said nothing.  He dared not remove his arm.

The shrowk straddled on to its legs.  It jerked itself forward, and rose slowly and uncouthly in the air.  They began to paddle upward toward the painted cliffs.  The motion was swaying, rocking, and sickening; the contact of the brute’s slimy skin was disgusting.  All this, however, was merely, background to Maskull, as he sat there with closed eyes, holding on to Oceaxe.  In the front and centre of his consciousness was the knowledge that he was gripping a fair woman, and that her flesh was responding to his touch like a lovely harp.

They climbed up and up.  He opened his eyes, and ventured to look around him.  By this time they were already level with the top of the outer rampart of precipices.  There now came in sight a wild archipelago of islands, with jagged outlines, emerging from a sea of air.  The islands were mountain summits; or, more accurately speaking, the country was a high tableland, fissured everywhere by narrow and apparently bottomless cracks.  These cracks were in some cases like canals, in others like lakes, in others merely holes in the ground, closed in all round.  The perpendicular sides of the islands—­that is, the upper, visible parts of the innumerable cliff faces—­were of bare rock, gaudily coloured; but the level surfaces were a tangle of wild plant life.  The taller trees alone were distinguishable from the shrowk’s back.  They were of different shapes, and did not look ancient; they were slender and swaying but did not appear very graceful; they looked tough, wiry, and savage.

As Maskull continued to explore the landscape, he forgot Oceaxe and his passion.  Other strange feelings came to the front.  The morning was gay and bright.  The sun scorched down, quickly-changing clouds sailed across the sky, the earth was vivid, wild, and lonely.  Yet he experienced no aesthetic sensations—­he felt nothing but an intense longing for action and possession.  When he looked at anything, he immediately wanted to deal with it.  The atmosphere of the land seemed not free, but sticky; attraction and repulsion were its constituents.  Apart from this wish to play a personal part in what was going on around and beneath him, the scenery had no significance for him.