_"Hush child! The beauty of Pi-Ruh-Al was so dazzling that no mortal might look upon it. Even the gods could scarce endure its splendor, and no sculptor has dared presume to represent her features. Not so with Sa-Hala-Lee, who is the goddess of N'urthly beauty and constancy. A touching legend relates to the manner by which she was wooed by Mah-Gurru-Dah, Lord of the East, patron of the forge. He was forced to wound her sore unto death with a lightning bolt forged in his smithy before she yielded--but thereafter she remained loyal with a faithfulness beyond mortal understanding. Yea, though it is reputed that both Maha-Ra-Lin and Bar-Du-Chan sought her because of her siren-like allure, she repulsed them with scorn._ _"Thus wrote the prophets of old: 'In the beginning was El-Leighi, dweller in the sun, who looked upon the sea of space and saw that it was a void, barren of all things. And El-Leighi hurled forth his thunderbolt and created a sphere of matter within that void. And he cast his thunderbolts again and yet again until he had created many spheres which circled slowly through the emptiness of space._ _"'El-Leighi looked upon his work, yet was not satisfied. Four of his bolts had formed spheres revolving so close to the sun that its rays scorched them with heat unbearable. Others--the mightiest bolts of all--formed planets immeasurably far away, lost in frigid coldness._ _"'So once again El-Leighi gathered his forces and hurled a thunderbolt into space. And on that thunderbolt rode great beings--gods inferior only to El-Leighi himself--whom he commanded to create a world on which life might exist._ _"'When the thunderbolt shattered, in a temperate region of space beyond the fourth planet, these gods fulfilled their destiny by gathering its fragments and out of them creating a new world....'"_ CHAPTER XV From a narrow strip of shore that fringed a murky sea, sheer cliffs rose--black, beetling, forbidding. In one direction the rampart lost itself in the haze of a bleak horizon; in the other it merged into a rocky but sloping ascent. The sea itself was of a muddy hue, reflecting feebly the rays of a sun which seemed to begrudge what little warmth it spared. The sky, gray though nearly cloudless, seemed overcast with a dusty haze. Where the sea washed into a narrow inlet at the foot of the last great promontory along the line of ramparts, a boulder--distinguished from others because it seemed grayer, smoother, more friable--contributed to the muddiness of the sea. Each time the tide rose and the waters swept over it, they softened and dissolved some of its outer coating. As the tides receded, they left a blob of mud, which slowly hardened through exposure to the sun, only to soften and disintegrate a trifle more at the next return of the tide.