They did not know what he said or what language he used.  At first Rodriguez thought Moorish, then he deemed it some secret language come down from magicians of old, while Morano merely wondered; and then they were lulled by the rhythm of those strange words, and so enquired no more.  Rodriguez pictured some sad wandering angel, upon some mountain-peak of African lands, resting a moment and talking to the solitudes, telling the lonely valley the mysteries of his home.  While lulled though Morano was he gave up his alertness uneasily.  All the while the green flame flooded upwards:  all the while the tremulous fingers made curious shadows.  The shadow seemed to run to Rodriguez and beckon him thence:  even Morano felt them calling.  Rodriguez closed his eyes.  The voice and the Moorish spells made now a more haunting melody:  they were now like a golden organ on undiscoverable mountains.  Fear came on Morano at the thought:  who had power to speak like this?  He grasped Rodriguez by the wrist.  “Master!” he said, but at that moment on one of those golden spells the spirit of Rodriguez drifted away from his body, and out of the greenish light of the curious room; unhampered by weight, or fatigue, or pain, or sleep; and it rose above the rocks and over the mountain, an unencumbered spirit:  and the spirit of Morano followed.

The mountain dwindled at once; the Earth swept out all round them and grew larger, and larger still, and then began to dwindle.  They saw then that they were launched upon some astounding journey.  Does my reader wonder they saw when they had no eyes?  They saw as they had never seen before, with sight beyond what they had ever thought to be possible.  Our eyes gather in light, and with the little rays of light that they bring us we gather a few images of things as we suppose them to be.  Pardon me, reader, if I call them things as we suppose them to be; call them by all means Things As They Really Are, if you wish.  These images then, this tiny little brainful that we gather from the immensities, are all brought in by our eyesight upside-down, and the brain corrects them again; and so, and so we know something.  An oculist will tell you how it all works.  He may admit it is all a little clumsy, or for the dignity of his profession he may say it is not at all.  But be this as it may, our eyes are but barriers between us and the immensities.  All our five senses that grope a little here and touch a little there, and seize, and compare notes, and get a little knowledge sometimes, they are only barriers between us and what there is to know.  Rodriguez and Morano were outside these barriers.  They saw without the imperfections of eyesight; they heard on that journey what would have deafened ears; they went through our atmosphere unburned by speed, and were unchilled in the bleak of the outer spaces.  Thus freed of the imperfections of the body they sped, no less upon a terrible journey, whose direction as yet Rodriguez only began to fear.