Soon afterwards, Philip Jordan went off to search for his father. He came to the oasis to say goodbye to Ransom. Kneeling beside him, he pressed the canteen of water to his lips.

"It's the last I have, but there's a river here somewhere. Quilter told me my father had seen it. When I find him, we'll go off and look for it together. Perhaps we'll see you there one day, doctor."

When he stood up Ransom saw Catherine Austen waving to him from a dune in the distance, hands on hips, her leather boots white with the chalklike sand of the desert. As Philip rejoined her she lifted her whip and the white-flanked lions loped off by her side.

That night, when a sandstorm blew up, Ransom went down to the lake and watched the drifts whirling across the dunes. Far out toward the center of the lake he could see the hull of the old river steamer once commanded by Captain Tulloch. Standing at the helm as the waves of white sand broke across the bow; its fine spray lifting over the funnel, was the tall figure of Jonas.

The storm had subsided the next morning, and Ransom made his farewells to Quilter and Miranda. Leaving the house, he waved to the children who had followed him to the gate, and then walked down the avenue to his old home. Nothing remained except the stumps of the chimneys, but he rested here for a few hours before continuing on his way.

He crossed the rubble and went down to the river, then began to walk along the widening mouth toward the lake. Smoothed by the wind, the white dunes covered the bed like motionless waves. He stepped among them, following the hollows that carried him out of sight of the shore. The sand was smooth and unmarked, gleaming with the bones of untold numbers of fish. The height of the dunes steadily increased, and an hour later the crests were almost twenty feet above his head.

Although it was not yet noon, the sun seemed to be receding into the sky, and the air was gradually becoming colder. To his surprise he noticed that he no longer cast any shadow onto the sand, as if he had at last completed his journey across the margins of the inner landscape he had carried in his mind for so many years. As the light failed, the air grew darker. The dust was dull and opaque, the crystals in its surface dead and clouded. An immense pall of darkness lay over the dunes, as if the whole of the exterior world were losing its existence.

It was some time later that he failed to notice it had started to rain.