A sudden change in the shape of the islet on which he stood, attracted his attention. At first wide and extensive in form, it was now narrow and contracted. Every moment it grew smaller, and yet smaller, and the waves of fire came rolling wave after wave over its surface. Aldarin started with a new and strange horror. Terrible it was to stand on the rock of fire, his feet consuming, his brain on fire, his heart a flame; air, sky and ocean, all burning into his very soul, terrible, most terrible, but those hollow murmurs, those fearful whispers of the damned came breaking on his ear, speaking of mysteries, yet more terrible, in the Vast Beyond.
The wretched man clung to the rock. Oh! God, how fearful was the first touch of the waves of molten flame; how the liquid fire ate into his flesh and corrupted his blood, as the spiral flames cresting, each wave came hissing and curling round his limbs!
The waves rose higher and higher; the bodies of the lost, offensive with decay, the loathsome, and worm-eaten came floating around Aldarin. He raised his hands, he pushed the ghastly carcasses aside, but still they came floating on, and on, throwing their crumbling arms around his neck and fixing their livid lips upon his burning cheek, in the kiss of the damned.
They hailed him—brother—with a hollow welcome, and as innumerable voices whispered forth the sound of awful welcome, Aldarin missed his footing on the rock, he felt his form changing with decay, he raised his hands in the effort to keep on the surface of the waves, and saw his fingers with the flesh dropping from the bones; he floated on the surface of the boundless sea, he became one of the damned.
Forever and forever lost.
They were floating on and on, the boundless legion of the lost, and with them floated Aldarin.
A strange distant sound burst on the ear, he heard it grow louder and louder, now it was like the roaring of a mighty ocean, now it was like the hissing of a thousand furnaces.
Floating on the waves of fire, crowded by legion of the lost, Aldarin turned with a feeling of intense awe, and murmured the question—“What means yon sound of terror—yon murmur of fear?”
“We are floating on and on, toward the Cataract of Hell—” was the hoarse murmur of the living corse floating by his side, and a million tongues, speaking from livid lips returned the echo—“On and on toward the Cataract of Hell!”
Aldarin was carried on without the power of resistance, with no object to stay his career, on and on, every moment nearing the fearful Cataract, whose omnipresent thunder now deafened his ears, and fell upon his very brain, like the awful echo of an unrelenting Judgment.