| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: they hung, weapon in hand, peering cautiously before them.
"And further away I saw others and then more at another point
in the wall. It was a long lax line of men in open order.
"Presently the man I had first seen stood up and shouted a command,
and his men came tumbling down the wall and into the high weeds
towards the temple. He scrambled down with them and led them.
He came facing towards me, and when he saw me he stopped.
"At first I had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but when
I had seen they meant to come to the temple I was moved to forbid
them. I shouted to the officer.
"'You must not come here,' I cried, '_I_ am here. I am here with my
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: curiously irregular difference in floor levels, characterized
the entire arrangement; and we should certainly have been lost
at the very outset but for the trail of torn paper left behind
us. We decided to explore the more decrepit upper parts first
of all, hence climbed aloft in the maze for a distance of some
one hundred feet, to where the topmost tier of chambers yawned
snowily and ruinously open to the polar sky. Ascent was effected
over the steep, transversely ribbed stone ramps or inclined planes
which everywhere served in lieu of stairs. The rooms we encountered
were of all imaginable shapes and proportions, ranging from five-pointed
stars to triangles and perfect cubes. It might be safe to say
At the Mountains of Madness |
