So preoccupied was he, that his arm partly released its clasp.  Oceaxe turned around to gaze at him.  Whether or not she was satisfied with what she saw, she uttered a low laugh, like a peculiar chord.

“Cold again so quickly, Maskull?”

“What do you want?” he asked absently, still looking over the side.  “It’s extraordinary how drawn I feel to all this.”

“You wish to take a hand?”

“I wish to get down.”

“Oh, we have a good way to go yet....  So you really feel different?”

“Different from what?  What are you talking about?” said Maskull, still lost in abstraction.

Oceaxe laughed again.  “It would be strange if we couldn’t make a man of you, for the material is excellent.”

After that, she turned her back once more.

The air islands differed from water islands in another way.  They were not on a plane surface, but sloped upward, like a succession of broken terraces, as the journey progressed.  The shrowk had hitherto been flying well above the ground; but now, when a new line of towering cliffs confronted them, Oceaxe did not urge the beast upward, but caused it to enter a narrow canyon, which intersected the mountains like a channel.  They were instantly plunged into deep shade.  The canal was not above thirty feet wide; the walls stretched upward on both sides for many hundred feet.  It was as cool as an ice chamber.  When Maskull attempted to plumb the chasm with his eyes, he saw nothing but black obscurity.

“What is at the bottom?” he asked.

“Death for you, if you go to look for it.”

“We know that.  I mean, is there any kind of life down there?”

“Not that I have ever heard of,” said Oceaxe, “but of course all things are possible.”

“I think very likely there is life,” he returned thoughtfully.

Her ironical laugh sounded out of the gloom.  “Shall we go down and see?”

“You find that amusing?”

“No, not that.  What I do find amusing is the big stranger with the beard, who is so keenly interested in everything except himself.”

Maskull then laughed too.  “I happen to be the only thing in Tormance which is not a novelty for me.”

“Yes, but I am a novelty for you.”

The channel went zigzagging its way through the belly of the mountain, and all the time they were gradually rising.

“At least I have heard nothing like your voice before,” said Maskull, who, since he had no longer anything to look at, was at last ready for conversation.

“What’s the matter with my voice?”

“It’s all that I can distinguish of you now; that’s why I mentioned it.”

“Isn’t it clear—­don’t I speak distinctly?”

“Oh, it’s clear enough, but—­it’s inappropriate.”

“Inappropriate?”

“I won’t explain further,” said Maskull, “but whether you are speaking or laughing, your voice is by far the loveliest and strangest instrument I have ever listened to.  And yet I repeat, it is inappropriate.”