9. He was carried therefore by the man, and as he was wont, when the door was shut he was within alone. And he could not stand up on account of the blows, but he prayed as he lay. And after he had prayed, he said with a shout, Here am I, Antony; I flee not from your stripes, for even if you inflict more nothing shall separate me Romans 8:35 from the love of Christ. And then he sang, 'though a camp be set against me, my heart shall not be afraid.' These were the thoughts and words of this ascetic. But the enemy, who hates good, marvelling that after the blows he dared to return, called together his hounds and burst forth, 'You see,' said he, 'that neither by the spirit of lust nor by blows did we stay the man, but that he braves us, let us attack him in another fashion.' But changes of form for evil are easy for the devil, so in the night they made such a din that the whole of that place seemed to be shaken by an earthquake, and the demons as if breaking the four walls of the dwelling seemed to enter through them, coming in the likeness of beasts and creeping things. And the place was on a sudden filled with the forms of lions, bears, leopards, bulls, serpents, asps, scorpions, and wolves, and each of them was moving according to his nature. The lion was roaring, wishing to attack, the bull seeming to toss with its horns, the serpent writhing but unable to approach, and the wolf as it rushed on was restrained; altogether the noises of the apparitions, with their angry ragings, were dreadful. But Antony, stricken and goaded by them, felt bodily pains severer still. He lay watching, however, with unshaken soul, groaning from bodily anguish; but his mind was clear, and as in mockery he said, 'If there had been any power in you, it would have sufficed had one of you come, but since the Lord has made you weak, you attempt to terrify me by numbers: and a proof of your weakness is that you take the shapes of brute beasts.' And again with boldness he said, 'If you are able, and have received power against me, delay not to attack; but if you are unable, why trouble me in vain? For faith in our Lord is a seal and a wall of safety to us.' So after many attempts they gnashed their teeth upon him, because they were mocking themselves rather than him.
To that landing, as Ransom narrated it to me, I will now proceed. Heseems to have been awakened (if that is the right word) from hisindescribable celestial state by the sensation of falling--in otherwords, when he was near enough to Venus to feel Venus as something inthe downward direction. The next thing he noticed was that he was verywarm on one side and very cold on the other, though neither sensationwas so extreme as to be really painful. Anyway, both were soon swallowedup in the prodigious white light from below which began to penetratethrough the semi-opaque walls of the casket. This steadily increased andbecame distressing in spite of the fact that his eyes were protected.There is no doubt this was the albedo, the outer veil of very denseatmosphere with which Venus is surrounded and which reflects the sun'srays with intense power. For some obscure reason he was not conscious,as he had been on his approach to Mars, of his own rapidly increasingweight. When the white light was just about to become unbearable, itdisappeared altogether, and very soon after the cold on his left sideand the heat on his right began to decrease and to be replaced by anequable warmth. I take it he was now in the outer layer of thePerelandrian atmosphere--at first in a pale, and later in a tinted,twilight. The prevailing colour, as far as he could see through thesides of the casket, was golden or coppery. By this time he must havebeen very near the surface of the planet, with the length of the casketat right angles to that surface--falling feet downwards like a man in alift. The sensation of falling--helpless as he was and unable to move hisarms--became frightening. Then suddenly there came a great greendarkness, an unidentifiable noise--the first message from the newworld--and a marked drop in temperature. He seemed now to have assumed ahorizontal position and also, to his great surprise, to be moving notdownwards but upwards; though, at the moment, he judged this to be anillusion. All this time he must have been making faint, unconsciousefforts to move his limbs, for now he suddenly found that the sides ofhis prison-house yielded to pressure. He was moving his limbs,encumbered with some viscous substance. Where was the casket? Hissensations were very confused. Sometimes he seemed to be falling,sometimes to be soaring upwards, and then again to be moving in thehorizontal plane. The viscous substance was white. There seemed to beless of it every moment . . . white, cloudy stuff just like the casket,only not solid. With a horrible shock he realised that it was thecasket, the casket melting, dissolving away, giving place to anindescribable confusion of colour--a rich, varied world in which nothing,for the moment, seemed palpable. There was no casket now. He was turnedout--deposited--solitary. He was in Perelandra.
as easy as falling off the face of the earth epub converter
His first impression was of nothing more definite than of somethingslanted--as though he were looking at a photograph which had been takenwhen the camera was not held level. And even this lasted only for aninstant. The slant was replaced by a different slant; then two slantsrushed together and made a peak, and the peak flattened suddenly into ahorizontal line, and the horizontal line tilted and became the edge of avast gleaming slope which rushed furiously towards him. At the samemoment he felt that he was being lifted. Up and up he soared till itseemed as if he must reach the burning dome of gold that hung above himinstead of a sky. Then he was at a summit; but almost before his glancehad taken in a huge valley that yawned beneath him--shining green likeglass and marbled with streaks of scummy white--he was rushing down intothat valley at perhaps thirty miles an hour. And now he realised thatthere was a delicious coolness over every part of him except his head,that his feet rested on nothing, and that he had for some time beenperforming unconsciously the actions of a swimmer. He was riding thefoamless swell of an ocean, fresh and cool after the fierce temperaturesof Heaven, but warm by earthly standards--as warm as a shallow bay withsandy bottom in a sub-tropical climate. As he rushed smoothly up thegreat convex hillside of the next wave he got a mouthful of the water.It was hardly at all flavoured with salt; it was drinkable--like freshwater and only, by an infinitesimal degree, less insipid. Though he hadnot been aware of thirst till now, his drink gave him a quiteastonishing pleasure. It was almost like meeting Pleasure itself for thefirst time. He buried his flushed face in the green translucence, andwhen he withdrew it, found himself once more on the top of a wave.
There were trees near him loaded with the fruit which he had alreadytasted, but his attention was diverted by a strange appearance a littlefarther off. Amid the darker foliage of a greenish-grey thicketsomething seemed to be sparkling. The impression, caught out of thecorner of his eye, had been that of a greenhouse roof with the sun onit. Now that he looked at it squarely it still suggested glass, butglass in perpetual motion. Light seemed to be coming and going in aspasmodic fashion. Just as he was moving to investigate this phenomenonhe was startled by a touch on his left leg. The beast had followed him.It was once more nosing and nudging. Ransom quickened his pace. So didthe dragon. He stopped; so did it. When he went on again it accompaniedhim so closely that its side pressed against his thighs and sometimesits cold, hard, heavy foot descended on his. The arrangement was solittle to his satisfaction that he was beginning to wonder seriously howhe could put an end to it when suddenly his whole attention wasattracted by something else. Over his head there hung from a hairytube-like branch a great spherical object, almost transparent, andshining. It held an area of reflected light in it and at one place asuggestion of rainbow colouring. So this was the explanation of theglass-like appearance in the wood. And looking round he perceivedinnumerable shimmering globes of the same kind in every direction. Hebegan to examine the nearest one attentively. At first he thought it wasmoving, then he thought it was not. Moved by a natural impulse he putout his hand to touch it. Immediately his head, face, and shoulders weredrenched with what seemed (in that warm world) an ice-cold shower bath,and his nostrils filled with a sharp, shrill, exquisite scent thatsomehow brought to his mind the verse in Pope, "die of a rose inaromatic pain." Such was the refreshment that he seemed to himself tohave been, till now, but half awake. When he opened his eyes--which hadclosed involuntarily at the shock of moisture--all the colours about himseemed richer and the dimness of that world seemed clarified. Are-enchantment fell upon him. The golden beast at his side seemed nolonger either a danger or a nuisance. If a naked man and a wise dragonwere indeed the sole inhabitants of this floating paradise, then thisalso was fitting, for at that moment he had a sensation not of followingan adventure but of enacting a myth. To be the figure that he was inthis unearthly pattern appeared sufficient.
Three times he waited till the shore whereon he stood became a ridge,and rose, swaying to the movement of his strange country, gesticulating.The fourth time he succeeded. The neighbouring island was, of course,lying for the moment beneath him like a valley. Quite unmistakably thesmall dark figure waved back. It detached itself from a confusingbackground of greenish vegetation and began running towards him--that is,towards the nearer coast of its own island--across an orange-colouredfield. It ran easily: the heaving surface of the field did not seem totrouble it. Then his own land reeled downwards and backwards and a greatwall of water pushed its way up between the two countries and cut eachoff from sight of the other. A moment later, and Ransom, from the valleyin which he now stood, saw the orange-coloured land pouring itself likea moving hillside down the slightly convex slope of a wave far abovehim. The creature was still running. The width of water between the twoislands was about thirty feet, and the creature was less than a hundredyards away from him. He knew now that it was not merely man-like, but aman--a green man on an orange field, green like the beautifully colouredgreen beetle in an English garden, running downhill towards him witheasy strides and very swiftly. Then the seas lifted his own land and thegreen man became a foreshortened figure far below him, like an actorseen from the gallery at Covent Garden. Ransom stood on the very brinkof his island, straining his body forward and shouting. The green manlooked up. He was apparently shouting too, with his hands arched abouthis mouth; but the roar of the seas smothered the noise and the nextmoment Ransom's island dropped into the trough of the wave and the highgreen ridge of sea cut off his view. It was maddening. He was torturedwith the fear that the distance between the islands might be increasing.Thank God: here came the orange land over the crest following him downinto the pit. And there was the stranger, now on the very shore, face toface with him. For one second the alien eyes looked at his full of loveand welcome. Then the whole face changed: a shock as of disappointmentand astonishment passed over it. Ransom realised, not without adisappointment of his own, that he had been mistaken for someone else.The running, the waving, the shouts, had not been intended for him. Andthe green man was not a man at all, but a woman.
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