A strange root known as the crocosus was developed into a perfect animal that crawled with four legs upon the floor. The animal was not unlike the lizard, or a diminutive crocodile, with an immensely long neck, which it held erect. The neck terminated in a bulbous head, with an open, bill-shaped mouth, not unlike the mouth of a pelican, while right below the jaws there grew a root-like appendage, that coiled around the neck. The animal possessed a root-like tail, and was a most interesting creature.
[Illustration: The Jalloast.]
To enumerate all the wonders of the conservatory of plant transmigration at Tanje would be impossible. I saw the jardil (or love-pouch), an orchid resembling a pouch, with the face of a child growing therein, from which radiated rootlets and jabots of spiral fronds. I also saw the redoubtable blocus, an animal resembling a jerboa, or kangaroo, whose only trace of plant existence was a few rootlets growing out of its back. The funny-fenny, or clowngrass, was a weed with veritable goblins growing on the stems. The goblins had long noses and wore high hats and lace collars, but were otherwise but plants with absorbent roots. They were so grotesque that I began to think that nature was laughing at me quite as much as I laughed at nature.
When leaving the conservatory I heard a chorus of tender voices like a band of spirits singing, whereupon the goddess directed my attention to a cluster of fairy girls that, like flowers, were growing upon the stem of a plant. It was a peculiarity of these fairy creatures to sing every time their goddess passed by, her spiritual atmosphere quickening them into conscious life and song. I was fairly dazzled with such a tribute of love to my gracious companion, and were the fairy flowers not sacred things I would have borne them away to exhibit such a trophy to the outer world.
[Illustration: The Gasternowl.]
This wonderful plant seemed more like the production of spirit power indulging in a weird fantasy of imagination, rather than an evolution of nature. It was a new experience to me to hear the little creatures sing in a tender chorus of adoration to the goddess and dance gleefully upon their stems. My guide fondled the strange creatures with her own fair fingers, and they seemed to me the greatest wonder I had yet beheld in Atvatabar.
"These," said the goddess, "are gleroserals, and I would gladly give you a spray were it not that removal from their tender habitat would kill them. But here is a flower, half-bird, half-plant, that I will send you in a proper cage if you care for it." The zoophyte referred to was another bird plant that flew around the conservatory possessing the head and body of an eagle, the wings of a butterfly and the tail of a plant. The plant-like appendage was composed of long beautiful sprays of graceful foliage, not unlike pine branches, that were curved into sinuous forms as the animal flew. It was known as the eaglon, and was without legs. I thanked the goddess for her precious gift, whereupon we left the conservatory.
[Illustration: The Crocosus.]
Wandering through thickets of roses whose burning blossoms swooned upon their stems, we came upon a thick carpet of verdure that surrounded a hidden lake of clear, cool water. The rocky basin of the lake had been sculptured by human hands. Its margin was in outline a bold pear-shaped curve, that also curved upon itself, formed by an immense chiselling of the fundamental rock. In a little harbor of cut rock lay a pleasure boat, a curiously-wrought shell of silver that was propelled by magnicity. The goddess entered the boat, bidding me follow her. We sat together on an ample couch in the stern of the boat underneath a silver canopy. Touching a button, the boat moved swiftly over the water. It was a scene of rapture! Gazing into the depths of the water I saw the bottom of the lake sculptured in immense masses of flowers of stone, like the roof of a Gothic cathedral, but a hundred times more luxuriant. Around and above us rose heights of blessedness filled with all the thousand ecstasies of leaf and flower. An islet bore a little pagoda that stood in the eternal noon a pillared jewel of stone, silent and beautiful. It was half concealed with festoons of creeping plants whose flowers were great globes of crimson, yellow and blue.
There was around me--paradise, and beside me--ecstasy!
"You are pleased with my garden?" said the goddess.
"This must be the garden of Hesperides that our poets write of," I replied. "Here at last I have found the ideal life."
The goddess reclined on the couch in an attitude of luxurious grace.
Her every gesture was at once heroic and beautiful.
[Illustration: The Jardil, or Love-Pouch.]
"Tell me what your poets say of nature, life and love," said she; "do they ever sing the delights of hopeless love?"
As the goddess uttered this last question I felt within me a strange delight. There sat beside me, floating on that mysterious wave, the idol of a great nation, the deity of its universal faith, a divinity of power, glory and beauty, laying aside spiritual empire to become the companion of a simple explorer of the internal world, her discoverer and her friend, by a most happy chance of fortune.
As these thoughts swiftly ran through my brain, and before I had time to reply, music, soft, weird, intensely intoxicating, was blown from among the tempestuous bloom of the paradises. The melody seemed the holiest thrill of hearts communing in the rapture of love! To explain the sweetness of the moment is impossible--the goddess was so alluring and serene. She kept her own emotions in the background as the result of a proud devotion to duty, and yet I felt swathed with a soul that seemed to have found an opportunity worthy the expression of its life.
A situation so daring, yet so tender, required an equally daring and reverent soul to meet it. I felt all its surpassing loveliness.
"Our poets," I replied, "have written of love in all its phases, describing the most spiritual passions as well as the most lustful. In poetry love may be any phase of love, but the reality is a compound of lust and spirituality, being rooted both in body and soul."
"Do your people," said the goddess, "never differentiate lust and love and obtain in real life only a spiritual romantic love such as we do in Atvatabar?"
"We believe, your holiness," I replied, "that such a love as you refer to is only to be found in a spiritual state and is the secret of disembodied blessedness."
"You must see Egyplosis," said she, "ere you depart from us, and there learn the possibility of ideal love in actual life."
"To discover such a joy," I replied, "will repay my journey to Atvatabar a thousandfold."
We alighted from the boat on a rocky margin of the lake that led into a labyrinth of flowers. Here we wandered at will, discovering at every step new delights. Lyone was not only a goddess, but also the fond incarnation of a comrade soul.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE JOURNEY TO EGYPLOSIS.
Never did time pass so rapidly or so happily as the days spent in the palace of the goddess. Although I met Lyone at the daily banquets and at our scientific discussions with the astronomers, naturalists, chemists, geologists, physicians and philosophers of Atvatabar, yet neither by look nor gesture did she betray the slightest memory of that ravishing scene in her garden only a few days before.
Again and again I asked myself, Was it possible that that calm and crowned goddess of the pantheon was a being that could feel thrilled with ordinary human ecstasy? Would I, most daring of men, ever be permitted to kiss that far-off mouth divine, and not be slain by one dreadful glance of contempt?
[Illustration: The Blocus.]
Our discussions terminated in an invitation by the goddess to accompany her in her aerial yacht, the _Aeropher_, to Egyplosis, whither, according to the sacred calendar, she must proceed to take part in the ceremony of the installation of a twin soul. Her holiness, their majesties the king and queen, myself and officers of the _Polar King_, together with the chief minister Koshnili, the military, civil and naval officers, the poets, savants, artists, and musicians of Atvatabar, would sail in the yacht of the goddess.
[Illustration: The Funny-Fenny, or Clowngrass.]
A host of lesser dignitaries, including the sailors of the _Polar King_ under command of Flathootly, would follow us in another yacht, called the _Fletyeming_. Each yacht had its own priest-captain, officers and crew of aerial navigators.
Each yacht consisted of a deck of fine woven cane, compact as steel, woven with great skill, with cabins, staterooms, etc., of the same material erected thereon, and high bamboo bulwarks to prevent the voyagers falling off the deck.
The propelling apparatus consisted of two large wheels, having numerous aerial fans that alternately beat backward and cut through the air as they oscillated on their axes. The wheels were supplemented by aeroplanes, resembling huge outspreading wings, inclined at an angle, so that their forward rush upon the air supported the ship.
They revolved with great rapidity, being driven by the accumulated force of a thousand magnic batteries, composed of dry metallic cells, especially designed for aerial navigation. Very little force was required to keep the vessel buoyed up in the air, owing to the diminished gravity.
It was discovered that the rarer metals terrelium and aquelium developed in contact, without salts or acids, enormous currents of magnicity without polarization or the development of gases. These metallic cells would run without attention or maintenance exerting magnic action, and could be stopped or started at any time without corrosion of metals or loss of energy, like the electric batteries on the outer sphere, but infinitely more powerful.
[Illustration: The Gleroseral.]
Aerial navigation was one of the great institutions of Atvatabar, and the goddess' yacht was only one of many thousand aerial ships that carried passengers, mails and light freight to and from every part of the country.
On such a machine as this we purposed travelling a distance of one thousand miles.
Five hundred miles west of Calnogor lay a range of lofty mountains, whose peaks pierced the upper strata of cold air. This region was the breeding-place of fearful storms that occasionally vexed the otherwise placid climate of the country.
Westward of the mountains, an elevated prairie or tableland extended for five hundred miles further, broken here and there into crevasses and canons, the beds of mighty rivers. Beyond the prairie an irregular agglomeration of mountains and valleys stretched five hundred miles further until the ocean was reached which formed the western boundary of Atvatabar.
Egyplosis, or the sacred palace, stood on an island in a lake lying in a romantic valley of the central plateau, one thousand miles west of Calnogor. This was the destination of the _Aeropher_, the goddess making a special visitation to the palace of hopeless love.
No journey could have begun with better auspices than ours. We soared up the grand divide, underneath the brilliant sun, which threw the moving shadow of the ship on the earth beneath.
[Illustration: The Eaglon.]
Captain Lavornal, the inventor of the _Aeropher_, was resolved to outdo all former records in aerial navigation, and accordingly drove the _Aeropher_ at a speed of eighty miles an hour.
The captain explained to me that he was using the wheels simply to lift the ship over the mountains. Once over these the wheels that were being used to lift the ship would thus propel her, when her normal speed of two hundred miles an hour would be reached.
Lyone was in a particularly happy mood. "I like aerial travelling so much," said she, "because it is the nearest mechanical approach to the nature of the soul."
"What relation to the soul can the ship possibly possess?" I inquired.