"Next," said he, coldly.
Down went the seraph Cuchulain, swirling in wide tumbles, scarcely
visible for quickness. Sometimes, with outstretched hands, he was a
cross that dropped plumb. Anon, head urgently downwards, he dived
steeply. Again, like a living hoop, head and heels together, he spun
giddily. Blind, deaf, dumb, breathless, mindless; and behind him Brien
of the O'Brien nation came pelting and whizzing.
What of that journey! Who could give it words? Of the suns that
appeared and disappeared like winking eyes. Comets that shone for an
instant, went black and vanished. Moons that came, and stood, and were
gone. And around all, including all, boundless space, boundless
silence; the black, unmoving void--the deep, unending quietude, through
which they fell with Saturn and Orion, and mildly-smiling Venus, and
the fair, stark-naked moon and the decent earth wreathed in pearl and
blue. From afar she appeared, the quiet one, all lonely in the void.
As sudden as a fair face in a crowded street. Beautiful as the sound
of falling waters. Beautiful as the sound of music in a silence. Like
a white sail on a windy sea. Like a green tree in a solitary place.
Chaste and wonderful she was. Flying afar. Flying aloft like a joyous
bird when the morning breaks on the darkness and he shrills sweet
tidings. She soared and sang. Gently she sang to timid pipes and
flutes of tender straw and murmuring, distant strings. A song that
grew and swelled, gathering to a multitudinous, deep-thundered harmony,
until the over-burdened ear failed before the appalling uproar of her
ecstasy, and denounced her. No longer a star! No longer a bird! A
plumed and horned fury! Gigantic, gigantic, leaping and shrieking
tempestuously, spouting whirlwinds of lightning, tearing gluttonously
along her path, avid, rampant, howling with rage and terror she leaped,
dreadfully she leaped and flew. . . .
Enough! They hit the earth--they were not smashed, there was that
virtue in them. They hit the ground just outside the village of
Donnybrook where the back road runs to the hills; and scarcely had they
bumped twice when Brien of the O'Brien nation had the seraph Cuchulain
by the throat--
"My threepenny-bit," he roared, with one fist up--