Observing that his hosts did not propose to descend, he begged them to wait for him, and scrambled down to the surface. When he got there, he found the water perfectly motionless and of a colourless transparency. He walked onto it, lay down at full length, and peered into the depths. It was weirdly clear: he could see down for an indefinite distance, without arriving at any bottom. Some dark, shadowy objects, almost out of reach of his eyes, were moving about.
Then a sound, very faint and mysterious, seemed to come up through the gnawl water from an immense depth. It was like the rhythm of a drum. There were four beats of equal length, but the accent was on the third. It went on for a considerable time, and then ceased.
The sound appeared to him. to belong to a different world from that in which he was travelling. The latter was mystical, dreamlike, and unbelievable - the drumming was like a very dim undertone of reality.
It resembled the ticking of a clock in a room full of voices, only occasionally possible to be picked up by the ear.
He rejoined Panawe and Joiwind, but said nothing to them about his experience. They all walked round the rim of the crater, and gazed down on the opposite side. Precipices similar to those that had overlooked the desert here formed the boundary of a vast moorland plain, whose dimensions could not be measured by the eye. It was solid land, yet he could not make out its prevailing colour. It was as if made of transparent glass, but it did not glitter in the sunlight. No objects in it could be distinguished, except a rolling river in the far distance, and, farther off still, on the horizon, a line of dark mountains, of strange shapes. Instead of being rounded, conical, or hogbacked, these heights were carved by nature into the semblance of castle battlements, but with extremely deep indentations.
The sky immediately above the mountains was of a vivid, intense blue.