Marvellous, it seemed, to learn so much, compared with the blank before, and yet so little compared with what might have been revealed. So that first night of revelations passed, and the morning dawned. The three laid down the scroll and went out to the beach before the cottage.
How wonderfully everything had changed to them since the previous night!
As they had read and listened in eager expectation through the night, every now and then a disappointment had crept over them that so much should be left untold; but now as they stepped out over the familiar threshold on the familiar beach, for the first time they understood how much had been revealed, and how marvellously everything was transfigured to them. The world had grown so infinitely larger; the island so infinitely less!
The island, which had been their world, seemed to have shrunk and shrivelled to a mere rocky peak, where some shipwrecked company had found a transient refuge, and where they were merely awaiting the vessel which was to take them thence.
As the dawn flushed over what they had been used to call mountains, the vision of the glorious mountain-ranges beyond and above them seemed to dwarf them into sand-banks. When the dawn grew into practical day, and the busy hum of labour and traffic came from the White Town across the creek, and eager voices began to resound along the shore, the three looked at one another with smiles that said, "Why make they this ado?" And when, with much pomp and circumstance, the attendants of one of the Town authorities escorted him with trumpets and banners past the Cottage, and all the dwellers in the neighbouring cottages made obeisance as they passed, and eagerly gazed after the pageant,—to the three whose eyes were opened it seemed like some game of little children playing at being kings and princes.
At first, on the discovery of the true proportion between the Island and the Main Land, everything was swallowed up in the sense of that proportion; or rather, of that tremendous disproportion. The Island dwindled to a mere speck. It was as if they had fallen asleep on what they believed to be terra firma, and wakened up on a raft with nothing but a few planks between them and the fathomless depths on every side.
For one thing, both from the old man's words and from the scroll, was absolutely clear.
Everywhere, everywhere, above that brooding mist, on high, commanding all they did, were towering at that moment the Everlasting Hills.
Somewhere, somewhere, behind that impenetrable veil (impenetrable only to eyes on this side of it), were flashing the towers of the Golden City, were standing open the pearly gates, were echoing in the tones of dear familiar voices, the welcomes which never die away along those happy shores, as the echoes of the partings never die from these. Somewhere, not afar off, the eyes of the Deliverer and the King were watching them.
And no one in that region knew of it but those three, standing together alone by the cottage threshold.