The Crystal Egg | Page 5

the light the more real
and solid it seemed. It was a moving picture: that is to say, certain
objects moved in it, but slowly in an orderly manner like real things,
and, according as the direction of the lighting and vision changed, the
picture changed also. It must, indeed, have been like looking through
an oval glass at a view, and turning the glass about to get at different
aspects.
Mr. Cave's statements, Mr. Wace assures me, were extremely
circumstantial, and entirely free from any of that emotional quality that
taints hallucinatory impressions. But it must be remembered that all the
efforts of Mr. Wace to see any similar clarity in the faint opalescence of
the crystal were wholly unsuccessful, try as he would. The difference in
intensity of the impressions received by the two men was very great,
and it is quite conceivable that what was a view to Mr. Cave was a
mere blurred nebulosity to Mr. Wace.
The view, as Mr. Cave described it, was invariably of an extensive
plain, and he seemed always to be looking at it from a considerable

height, as if from a tower or a mast. To the east and to the west the
plain was bounded at a remote distance by vast reddish cliffs, which
reminded him of those he had seen in some picture; but what the
picture was Mr. Wace was unable to ascertain. These cliffs passed
north and south--he could tell the points of the compass by the stars
that were visible of a night--receding in an almost illimitable
perspective and fading into the mists of the distance before they met.
He was nearer the eastern set of cliffs; on the occasion of his first
vision the sun was rising over them, and black against the sunlight and
pale against their shadow appeared a multitude of soaring forms that
Mr. Cave regarded as birds. A vast range of buildings spread below
him; he seemed to be looking down upon them; and as they approached
the blurred and refracted edge of the picture they became indistinct.
There were also trees curious in shape, and in colouring a deep mossy
green and an exquisite grey, beside a wide and shining canal. And
something great and brilliantly coloured flew across the picture. But the
first time Mr. Cave saw these pictures he saw only in flashes, his hands
shook, his head moved, the vision came and went, and grew foggy and
indistinct. And at first he had the greatest difficulty in finding the
picture again once the direction of it was lost.
His next clear vision, which came about a week after the first, the
interval having yielded nothing but tantalising glimpses and some
useful experience, showed him the view down the length of the valley.
The view was different, but he had a curious persuasion, which his
subsequent observations abundantly confirmed, that he was regarding
the strange world from exactly the same spot, although he was looking
in a different direction. The long façade of the great building, whose
roof he had looked down upon before, was now receding in perspective.
He recognised the roof. In the front of the façade was a terrace of
massive proportions and extraordinary length, and down the middle of
the terrace, at certain intervals, stood huge but very graceful masts,
bearing small shiny objects which reflected the setting sun. The import
of these small objects did not occur to Mr. Cave until some time after,
as he was describing the scene to Mr. Wace. The terrace overhung a
thicket of the most luxuriant and graceful vegetation, and beyond this
was a wide grassy lawn on which certain broad creatures, in form like

beetles but enormously larger, reposed. Beyond this again was a richly
decorated causeway of pinkish stone; and beyond that, and lined with
dense red weeds, and passing up the valley exactly parallel with the
distant cliffs, was a broad and mirror-like expanse of water. The air
seemed full of squadrons of great birds, manoeuvring in stately curves;
and across the river was a multitude of splendid buildings, richly
coloured and glittering with metallic tracery and facets, among a forest
of moss-like and lichenous trees. And suddenly something flapped
repeatedly across the vision, like the fluttering of a jewelled fan or the
beating of a wing, and a face, or rather the upper part of a face with
very large eyes, came as it were close to his own and as if on the other
side of the crystal. Mr. Cave was so startled and so impressed by the
absolute reality of these eyes that he drew his head back from the
crystal to look behind it. He had become so absorbed in watching that
he was quite surprised to find himself in the