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“If your masters are indeed gods, as you say, why did they not destroy the creature from the sea?”

“Two of them went out to kill it, but they saw its eyes and horror overcame them so that they died. After that they saw that this was a very evil creature, and in their wisdom they left it alone.”

“They must be poor creatures to be so easily frightened to death. In my country we could not believe in gods that ever die. Yet the very first of your masters that I saw when I reached this island has since died and his body has been burned.”

“His body–yes. But he himself still lives. I was taught these things by the gods when I was a child, and it is wrong of you to try and make me think otherwise.”

I began to realise the tremendous strength of early impression. I could call to mind that I had seen evidence enough of it before ever I came to Thule. It seemed almost impossible for me–one man–to fight against this crafty and complex organisation of tyranny and slavery that was here blindly accepted. I turned to another of her terrors–her terror of the sea.

“Do you swim well?” I asked her.

She laughed. “One swims as one walks or runs. Why not? You ask such strange things.”

“Very well then,” I said, “you shall swim in the sea.”

“No. The sea is the evil water. If one had only that water to drink, one would die. Is that not so?”

“It is, but—-“

“Very well then. We are rightly taught not to touch the sea. You speak to me sometimes very much as if you were a god, and you boast of freedom, and you have come all the way from a far-off country; but you yourself would not dare to enter the sea.”

It was my turn to laugh. “I am going to swim in it this evening,” I said.

“I implore you not to do it,” said Dream.

“I shall come to no harm.”

“You will most certainly die.”

“You will see that I shall not.”

“It would be a pity, because I myself perhaps may escape death yet for a few days longer, and I might begin to love you.”

We had now reached the entrance to the caves.

CHAPTER IX

The side of the brown sandstone cliff was perforated like a gigantic rabbit warren. I judged the cliffs to be natural in character, but in the labyrinth of passages and rooms upon which one first entered, much artificial work had been done. In places columns of brick upheld the roof, and the walls had been trimmed and levelled by a tool. I guessed–for it was a point upon which Dream could tell me nothing–that the lords of Thule had at one time some intention of making use of these natural excavations, and that they had been frightened from their task by the absurd superstition which Dream had recounted to me. I could not believe in the marvellous amphibious monster that had come out of the sea, and for fifty years or more had lived in the heart of these cliffs.

I told Dream of my doubts, but she was not to be shaken. The track of the animal when it went in had been clearly visible, and no track had been found to show that it had gone out again.

“On what then does it live?” I asked.

“Things that it finds in the water.”

“But you tell me that it has never gone back to the sea again.”

“Never. But far within the caves–much farther than I have ever gone–there is a great lake. It lives there. I will take you to a place where you can hear the roar of the water falling into the lake. Follow me closely or you may lose yourself.”

She took me through many winding passages until she reached a point where she knelt and put her ear to the ground. She made me do the same. I could certainly hear the sound of running water below me, but that did not prove the existence of the lake, much less of the monster that was supposed to inhabit the lake. I told her this, and she did not like it.