And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?
And if they were in the habit of conferring honours among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honours and glories, or envy the possessors of them?
The words were still in his hearing as just spoken--distinctly in his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life--when the weary passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that the
shadows of the night were gone.
"If no one follows us about like a
shadow, that's no proof that we've any right to blame her."
I was startled by a great patch of vivid scarlet on the ground, and going up to it found it to be a peculiar fungus, branched and corrugated like a foliaceous lichen, but deliquescing into slime at the touch; and then in the shadow of some luxuriant ferns I came upon an unpleasant thing,--the dead body of a rabbit covered with shining flies, but still warm and with the head torn off.
There was an emerald flash in his eyes as he glanced at me from the shadow of the trees, a half-luminous colour that vanished as he turned his head again.
"I have no shadow! So then, it has actually gone last night, and not come again.
This annoyed him: not so much because the shadow was gone, but because he knew there was a story about a man without a shadow.* It was known to everybody at home, in the cold lands; and if the learned man now came there and told his story, they would say that he was imitating it, and that he had no need to do.
And why callest thou thyself my
shadow? Thou art not pleasing unto me."
At that moment the mysterious illumination suddenly flared to an intense, an almost blinding splendor, flushing the entire sky, extinguishing the stars and throwing the monstrous
shadow of himself athwart the landscape.
The voice came nearer, and now in the
shadow there was a faint glow of light, like the glow that gathers on the six-days' dead.
He told us much of the wonderful resources of Thuria, the Land of Awful
Shadow, and of his long journey in search of Amoz.
Her beams bemocked the sultry main, Like April hoar-frost spread; But where the ship's huge
shadow lay, The charmed water burnt alway A still and awful red.
On glancing sideways by chance, he perceived a sort of
shadow crawling after him along the walls.
"You forget," Paul went on--"ah, you forget the
shadow."
