beyond the notion of calm. Stars in the empyrean and stars in Ripogenus
winked at each other across ninety-nine billions of leagues as
uninterruptedly as boys at a boarding-school table.

I knelt amidships in the birch with gun and rifle on either side. The
pilot gave one stroke of his paddle, and we floated out upon what seemed
the lake. Whatever we were poised and floating upon he hesitated to
shatter with another dip of his paddle, lest he should shatter the thin
basis and sink toward heaven and the stars.

Presently the silence seemed to demand gentle violence, and the
unwavering water needed slight tremors to teach it the tenderness of its
calm; then my guide used his blade, and cut into glassiness. We crept
noiselessly along by the lake-edge, within the shadows of the pines.
With never a plash we slid. Rare drops fell from the cautious paddle
and tinkled on the surface, overshot, not parted by, our imponderable
passage. Sometimes from far within the forest would come sounds of
rustling branches or crackling twigs. Somebody of life approaches with
stealthy tread. Gentlier, even gentlier, my steersman! Take up no pearly
drop from the lake, mother of pearliness, lest falling it sound too
loudly. Somewhat comes. Let it come unterrified to our ambush among the
shadows by the shore.

Somewhat, something, somebody was coming, perhaps, but some other thing
or body thwarted it and it came not. To glide over glassiness while
uneventful moments link themselves into hours is monotonous. Night and
stillness laid their soothing spell upon me. I was entranced. I lost
myself out of time and space, and seemed to be floating unimpelled and
purposeless, nowhere in Forever.