And I too felt that I would pray.  Yet I liked not to pray to a jealous God there where the frail affectionate gods whom the heathen love were being humbly invoked; so I bethought me, instead, of Sheol Nugganoth, whom the men of the jungle have long since deserted, who is now unworshipped and alone; and to him I prayed.

And upon us praying the night came suddenly down, as it comes upon all men who pray at evening and upon all men who do not; yet our prayers comforted our own souls when we thought of the Great Night to come.

And so Yann bore us magnificently onwards, for he was elate with molten snow that the Poltiades had brought him from the Hills of Hap, and the Marn and Migris were swollen full with floods; and he bore us in his might past Kyph and Pir, and we saw the lights of Goolunza.

Soon we all slept except the helmsman, who kept the ship in the mid-stream of Yann.

When the sun rose the helmsman ceased to sing, for by song he cheered himself in the lonely night.  When the song ceased we suddenly all awoke, and another took the helm, and the helmsman slept.

We knew that soon we should come to Mandaroon.  We made a meal, and Mandaroon appeared.  Then the captain commanded, and the sailors loosed again the greater sails, and the ship turned and left the stream of Yann and came into a harbour beneath the ruddy walls of Mandaroon.  Then while the sailors went and gathered fruits I came alone to the gate of Mandaroon.  A few huts were outside it, in which lived the guard.  A sentinel with a long white beard was standing in the gate, armed with a rusty pike.  He wore large spectacles, which were covered with dust.  Through the gate I saw the city.  A deathly stillness was over all of it.  The ways seemed untrodden, and moss was thick on doorsteps; in the market-place huddled figures lay asleep.  A scent of incense came wafted through the gateway, of incense and burned poppies, and there was a hum of the echoes of distant bells.  I said to the sentinel in the tongue of the region of Yann, ’Why are they all asleep in this still city?’

He answered:  ’None may ask questions in this gate for fear they wake the people of the city.  For when the people of this city wake the gods will die.  And when the gods die men may dream no more.’  And I began to ask him what gods that city worshipped, but he lifted his pike because none might ask questions there.  So I left him and went back to the Bird of the River.

Certainly Mandaroon was beautiful with her white pinnacles peering over her ruddy walls and the green of her copper roofs.