The Ball and The Cross | Page 3

something sticking up in the middle of it."
"So there is," said the Professor, leaning over the side of the ship, his spectacles shining
with intellectual excitement. "What can it be? It might of course be merely a----"
Then a shriek indescribable broke out of him of a sudden, and he flung up his arms like a
lost spirit. The monk took the helm in a tired way; he did not seem much astonished for
he came from an ignorant part of the world in which it is not uncommon for lost spirits to
shriek when they see the curious shape which the Professor had just seen on the top of the
mysterious ball, but he took the helm only just in time, and by driving it hard to the left
he prevented the flying ship from smashing into St. Paul's Cathedral.
A plain of sad-coloured cloud lay along the level of the top of the Cathedral dome, so that
the ball and the cross looked like a buoy riding on a leaden sea. As the flying ship swept
towards it, this plain of cloud looked as dry and definite and rocky as any grey desert.
Hence it gave to the mind and body a sharp and unearthly sensation when the ship cut
and sank into the cloud as into any common mist, a thing without resistance. There was,
as it were, a deadly shock in the fact that there was no shock. It was as if they had cloven
into ancient cliffs like so much butter. But sensations awaited them which were much
stranger than those of sinking through the solid earth. For a moment their eyes and
nostrils were stopped with darkness and opaque cloud; then the darkness warmed into a
kind of brown fog. And far, far below them the brown fog fell until it warmed into fire.
Through the dense London atmosphere they could see below them the flaming London
lights; lights which lay beneath them in squares and oblongs of fire. The fog and fire
were mixed in a passionate vapour; you might say that the fog was drowning the flames;
or you might say that the flames had set the fog on fire. Beside the ship and beneath it
(for it swung just under the ball), the immeasurable dome itself shot out and down into
the dark like a combination of voiceless cataracts. Or it was like some cyclopean
sea-beast sitting above London and letting down its tentacles bewilderingly on every side,
a monstrosity in that starless heaven. For the clouds that belonged to London had closed
over the heads of the voyagers sealing up the entrance of the upper air. They had broken
through a roof and come into a temple of twilight.
They were so near to the ball that Lucifer leaned his hand against it, holding the vessel
away, as men push a boat off from a bank. Above it the cross already draped in the dark
mists of the borderland was shadowy and more awful in shape and size.
Professor Lucifer slapped his hand twice upon the surface of the great orb as if he were
caressing some enormous animal. "This is the fellow," he said, "this is the one for my
money."
"May I with all respect inquire," asked the old monk, "what on earth you are talking
about?"
"Why this," cried Lucifer, smiting the ball again, "here is the only symbol, my boy. So fat.
So satisfied. Not like that scraggy individual, stretching his arms in stark weariness." And
he pointed up to the cross, his face dark with a grin. "I was telling you just now, Michael,
that I can prove the best part of the rationalist case and the Christian humbug from any
symbol you liked to give me, from any instance I came across. Here is an instance with a

vengeance. What could possibly express your philosophy and my philosophy better than
the shape of that cross and the shape of this ball? This globe is reasonable; that cross is
unreasonable. It is a four-legged animal, with one leg longer than the others. The globe is
inevitable. The cross is arbitrary. Above all the globe is at unity with itself; the cross is
primarily and above all things at enmity with itself. The cross is the conflict of two
hostile lines, of irreconcilable direction. That silent thing up there is essentially a
collision, a crash, a struggle in stone. Pah! that sacred symbol of yours has actually given
its name to a description of desperation and muddle. When we speak of men at once
ignorant of each other and frustrated by each other, we say they are at cross-purposes.
Away with the thing! The very shape of it is a contradiction in terms."
"What you say