Now was the army all gotten ashipboard, and farewells said to Volle and those who should abide at home with him. The ships rowed out into the firth all orderly, their silken sails unfurled, and that great armament sailed southward into the open seas under a clear sky. All the way the wind favoured them, and they made a swift passage, so that on the thirtieth morning from their sailing out of Lookinghaven they sighted the long gray cliff-line of Impland the More dim in the low blown spray of the sea, and sailed through the Straits of Melikaphkhaz in column ahead, for scarce might two ships pass abreast through that narrow way. Black precipices shut in the straits on either hand, and the sea-birds in their thousands whitened every little ledge of those cliffs like snow. Great flights of them rose and circled overhead as the ships sped by, and the air was full of their plaints. And right and left, as of young whales blowing, columns of white spray shot up continually from the surface of the sea. For these were the stately- winged gannets fishing that sea-strait. By threes and fours they flew, each following other in ordered line, many mast-heights high; and ever and anon one checked in her flight as if a bolt had smitten her, and swooped head-foremost with wings half-spread, like a broadbarbed dart of dazzling whiteness, till at a few feet above the surface she clapped close her wings and cleft the water with a noise as of a great stone cast into the sea. Then in a moment up she bobbed, white and spruce with her prey in her gullet; rode the waves a minute to rest and consider; then with great sweeping wing-strokes up again to resume her flight.

After a mile or two the narrows opened and the cliffs grew lower, and the fleet sped past the red reefs of Uaimnaz and the lofty stacks of Pashnemarthra white with sea-gulls on to the blue solitude of the Didornian Sea. All day they sailed south-east with a failing wind. The coastline of Melikaphkhaz fell away astern, paled in the mists of distance, and was lost to sight, until only the square cloven outline of the Pashnemarthran islands broke the level horizon of the sea. Then these too sank out of sight, and the ships rowed on south-eastward in a dead calm. The sun stooped to the western waves, entering his bath of blood-red fire. He sank, and all the ways were darkened. All night they rowed gently on under the strange southern stars, and the broken waters of that sea at every oar-stroke were like fire burning. Then out of the sea to eastward came the day-star, ushering the dawn, brighter than all night's stars, tracing a little path of gold along the waters. Then dawn, filling the low eastern skies with a fleet of tiny cockle-shells of bright gold fire; then the great face of the sun ablaze. And with the going up of the sun a light wind sprang up, bellying their sails on the starboard tack; so that ere day declined the sea-cliffs of Muelva hung white above the spray-mist on their larboard bow. They beached the ships on a white shell-strand behind a headland that sheltered it from the east and north. Here the barrier of cliffs stood back a little from the shore, giving place for a fertile dell of green pasture, and woods clustering at the foot of the cliffs, and a little spring of water in the midst.

So for that night they slept on board, and next day made their camp, discharging the ships of burthen that were laden with the horses and stuff. But the Lord Juss was minded not to tarry an hour more in Muelva than should suffice to give all needful orders to Gaslark and La Fireez what they should do and when expect him again, and to make provision for himself and those who must fare with him beyond these shadowing cliffs into the haunted wastes of the Moruna. Ere noon was all this accomplished and farewells said, and these lords, Juss, Spitfire, and Brandoch Daha, set forth along the beach southward towards a point where it seemed most hopeful to scale the cliffs. With them went the Lord Gro, both by his own wish and because he had known the Moruna aforetime and these particular parts thereof; and with them went besides those two brothers-in-law, Zigg and Astar, bearing the precious burden of the egg, for that honour and trust had Juss laid on them at their earnest seeking. So with some pains after an hour or more they won up the barrier, and halted for a minute on the cliff's edge.

The skin of Gro's hands was hurt with the sharp rocks. Tenderly he drew on his lambswool gloves, and shivered a little; for the breath of that desert blew snell and frore and there seemed a shadow in the air southward, for all it was bright and gentle weather below whence they were come. Yet albeit his frail body quailed, even so were his spirits within him raised with high and noble imaginings as he stood on the lip of that rocky cliff. The cloudless vault of heaven; the unnumbered laughter of the sea; that quiet cove beneath, and those ships of war and that army camping by the ships; the emptiness of the blasted wolds to southward, where every rock seemed like a dead man's skull and every rank tuft of grass hag-ridden; the bearing of those lords of Demonland who stood beside him, as if nought should be of commoner course to them pursuing their resolve than to turn their backs on living land and enter those regions of the dead; these things with a power as of a mighty music made Gro's breath catch in his throat and the tear spring in his eye.

In such wise after more than two years did Lord Juss begin his second crossing of the Moruna in quest of his dear brother the Lord Goldry Bluszco.

XXVIII - ZORA RACH NAM PSARRION

Of the Lord Juss's riding of the hippogriff to Zora Rach, and of the ills encountered by him in that accursed place, and the manner of his performing his great enterprise to deliver his brother out of bondage.

LULLED with light-stirring airs too gentle-soft to ruffle her glassy surface, warm incense-laden airs sweet with the perfume of immortal flowers, the charmed Lake of Ravary dreamed under the moon. It was the last hour before the dawn. Enchanted boats, that seemed builded of the glow-worm's light, drifted on the starry bosom of the lake. Over the sloping woods the limbs of the mountains lowered, unmeasured, vast, mysterious in the moon's glamour. In remote high spaces of night beyond glimmered the spires of Koshtra Pivrarcha and the virgin snows of Romshir and Koshtra Belorn. No bird or beast moved in the stillness: only a nightingale singing to the stars from a coppice of olive-trees near the Queen's pavilion on the eastern shore. And that was a note not like a bird's of middle earth, but a note to charm down spirits out of the air, or to witch the imperishable senses of the Gods when they would hold communion with holy Night and make her perfect, and all her lamps and voices perfect in their eyes.

The silken hangings of the pavilion door, parting as in the portal of a vision, made way for that Queen, fosterling of the most high Gods. She paused a step or two beyond the threshold, looking down where those lords of Demonland, Spitfire and Brandoch Daha, with Gro and Zigg and Astar, wrapped in their cloaks, lay on the gowany dewy banks that sloped down to the water's edge.

"Asleep," she whispered. "Even as he within sleepeth against the dawn. I do think it is only in a great man's breast sleep hath so gentle a bed when great events are toward."

Like a lily, or like a moonbeam strayed through the leafy roof into a silent wood, she stood there, her face uplifted to the starry night where all the air was drenched with the silver radiance of the moon. And now in a soft voice she began supplication to the Gods which are from everlasting, calling upon them in turn by their holy names, upon gray-eyed Pallas, and Apollo, and Artemis the fleet Huntress, upon Aphrodite, and Hera, Queen of Heaven, and Ares, and Hermes, and the dark-tressed Earthshaker. Nor was she afraid to address her holy prayers to him who from his veiled porch beside Acheron and Lethe Lake binds to his will the devils of the under-gloom, nor to the great Father of All in Whose sight time from the beginning until to-day is but the dipping of a wand into the boundless ocean of eternity. So prayed she to the blessed Gods, most earnestly requiring them that under their countenance might be that ride, the like whereof earth had not known: the riding of the hippogriff, not rashly and by an ass as heretofore to his own destruction, but by the man of men who with clean purpose and resolution undismayed should enforce it carry him to his heart's desire.