I stood looking at the blind hermit and listening to his song of greeting, hardly knowing what to expect next when, suddenly, he threw himself upon his knees and crept under the far-reaching branches of one of these gigantic sentinels of the Great Gloomy Forest.
Bulger and I followed him! Thus it was we entered the domain of Palin-mâ-Talin, Home of Darkness. I shall not try to describe to you the solemn stillness, the mysterious twilight of the Great Gloomy Forest, nor to paint for you the wonderful beauty of the deep green mosses which covered rocks and trees: trailed from the swaying branches, carpeted the floorway, or hung like heavy canopies, from tree to tree, above our heads, and increased the gloom caused by the thick, interlacing foliage.
I had followed Benè-agâ’s noiseless footsteps about half a mile into the stilly depths of Palin-mâ-Talin when, I began to feel a strange chill creep over me; beginning at my very finger tips and pursuing its insidious way toward my very vitals. So rapidly did it run its benumbing course that I was upon the point of calling out to the Benè-agâ, when he halted; and having broken a twig from a tree with foliage of dark green and polished leaves, bade me eat them, saying:
“Palin-mâ-Talin does no harm to those that know him!”
I found the leaves pungent and agreeable to the taste. Their effect was magical. My limbs at once forgot their numbness and my step lost its heaviness.
We had now been several hours in the Great Gloomy Forest; and, thus far, Benè-agâ had advanced into its ever-increasing gloom—for night was falling, without a halt.
Had Benè-agâ had as many eyes as Argus and each of lynx’s power, he could not have pursued his way thro’ Palin-mâ-Talin’s gloomy corridors more easily and more securely. His polished wand flashed like a thing of life in his miraculously trained hand, touching everything, vibrating, swinging, advancing, retreating, with a rapidity, that my eyes could not follow.
“O, great master!” I called out to him, “let me not be presumptuous enough to speak to thee of things which should be left unstirred in the chambers of thy mind, but if it be permitted to me to know, tell me how thy rayless eyes can pierce this gloom and find a path thro’ this trackless forest, wrapt in the gloom and silence of ten thousand years!”
“It shall be as thou wishest, son;” replied the blind hermit “the little there is to know thou shall hear! But surely, thy young limbs must be weary. First let me make ready a bed for the night and spread some food and drink!”
So saying, he swung his leathern bag off his shoulder, took from it a roll of dried skin and spread it on the ground; then, wrenching four pine boughs from a tree near by, he thrust them in the earth one at each corner of a square, and striking a spark with his tinder-box, set fire to the pitch which trickled down the boughs.