“It’s all that I can distinguish of you now; that’s why I mentioned it.”
“Isn’t it clear—don’t I speak distinctly?”
“Oh, it’s clear enough, but—it’s inappropriate.”
“Inappropriate?”
“I won’t explain further,” said Maskull, “but whether you are speaking or laughing, your voice is by far the loveliest and strangest instrument I have ever listened to. And yet I repeat, it is inappropriate.”
“You mean that my nature doesn’t correspond?”
He was just considering his reply, when their talk was abruptly broken off by a huge and terrifying, but not very loud sound rising up from the gulf directly underneath them. It was a low, grinding, roaring thunder.
“The ground is rising under us!” cried Oceaxe.
“Shall we escape?”
She made no answer, but urged the shrowk’s flight upward, at such a steep gradient that they retained their seats with difficulty. The floor of the canyon, upheaved by some mighty subterranean force, could be heard, and almost felt, coming up after them, like a gigantic landslip in the wrong direction. The cliffs cracked, and fragments began to fall. A hundred awful noises filled the air, growing louder and louder each second—splitting, hissing, cracking, grinding, booming, exploding, roaring. When they had still fifty feet or so to go, to reach the top, a sort of dark, indefinite sea of broken rocks and soil appeared under their feet, ascending rapidly, with irresistible might, accompanied by the most horrible noises. The canal was filled up for two hundred yards, before and behind them. Millions of tons of solid matter seemed to be raised. The shrowk in its ascent was caught by the uplifted debris. Beast and riders experienced in that moment all the horrors of an earthquake—they were rolled violently over, and thrown among the rocks and dirt. All was thunder, instability, motion, confusion.