only by the power of his eye.  The sea was unlike any sea on Earth.  It resembled an immense liquid opal.  On a body colour of rich, magnificent emerald-green, flashes of red, yellow, and blue were everywhere shooting up and vanishing.  The wave motion was extraordinary.  Pinnacles of water were slowly formed until they attained a height of perhaps ten or twenty feet, when they would suddenly sink downward and outward, creating in their descent a series of concentric rings for long distances around them.  Quickly moving currents, like rivers in the sea, could be seen, racing away from land; they were of a darker green and bore no pinnacles.  Where the sea met the shore, the waves rushed over the sands far in, with almost sinister rapidity—­accompanied by a weird, hissing, spitting sound, which was what Maskull had heard.  The green tongues rolled in without foam.

About twenty miles distant, as he judged, directly opposite him, a long, low island stood up from the sea, black and not distinguished in outline.  It was Swaylone’s Island.  Maskull was less interested in that than in the blue sunset that glowed behind its back.  Alppain had set, but the whole northern sky was plunged into the minor key by its afterlight.  Branchspell in the zenith was white and overpowering, the day was cloudless and terrifically hot; but where the blue sun had sunk, a sombre shadow seemed to overhang the world.  Maskull had a feeling of disintegration—­just as if two chemically distinct forces were simultaneously acting upon the cells of his body.  Since the afterglow of Alppain affected him like this, he thought it more than likely that he would never be able to face that sun itself, and go on living.  Still, some modification might happen to him that would make it possible.

The sea tempted him.  He made up his mind to bathe, and at once walked toward the shore.  The instant he stepped outside the shadow line of the forest trees, the blinding rays of the sun beat down on him so savagely that for a few minutes he felt sick and his head swam.  He trod quickly across the sands.  The orange-coloured parts were nearly hot enough to roast food, he judged, but the violet parts were like fire itself.  He stepped on a patch in ignorance, and immediately jumped high into the air with a startled yell.

The sea was voluptuously warm.  It would not bear his weight, so he determined to try swimming.  First of all he stripped off his skin garment, washed it thoroughly with sand and water, and laid it in the sun to dry.  Then he scrubbed himself as well as he could and washed out his beard and hair.  After that, he waded in a long way, until the water reached his breast, and took to swimming—­avoiding the spouts as far as possible He found it no pastime.  The water was everywhere of unequal density.  In some places he could swim, in others he could barely save himself from drowning, in others again he could not force himself beneath the surface at all.  There were no outward signs to show what the water ahead held in store for him.  The whole business was most dangerous.