And if we could have bridged it
still at that road's end was the cliff whose shaft Norhala
had sealed with her lightnings.
So we entered the rift.
Of our wanderings thereafter I need not write. From
the rift we emerged into a maze of the valleys, and after
a month in that wilderness, living upon what game we
could shoot, we found a road that led us into Gyantse.
In another six weeks we were home in America.
My story is finished.
There in the Trans-Himalayan wilderness is the blue globe
that was the weird home of the lightning witch--and looking
back I feel now she could not have been all woman.
There is the vast pit with its coronet of fantastic peaks;
its symboled, calcined floor and the crumbling body of the
inexplicable, the incredible Thing which, alive, was the
shadow of extinction, annihilation, hovering to hurl itself
upon humanity. That shadow is gone; that pall withdrawn.
But to me--to each of us four who saw those phenomena--
their lesson remains, ineradicable; giving a new strength
and purpose to us, teaching us a new humility.
For in that vast crucible of life of which we are so
small a part, what other Shapes may even now be rising
to submerge us?
In that vast reservoir of force that is the mystery-filled
infinite through which we roll, what other shadows may
be speeding upon us?
Who knows?
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Metal Monster, by A.
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