Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/261

 origin. Once more I was seized with that same sense of security; that same immeasureable calmness. Involuntarily I found myself repeating a single word, over and over again.

“Hope!” I kept murmuring. “Hope!"

I turned and looked behind me.

Maurice still slumbered. Walla crouched near him, her head bent forward, and there—oh God! there it was again—there was that bounding globe of light at her feet.

Hope!

I did hope now!

Silently I prayed that God might give his spirit messengers power to help us in this the hour of our sore distress.

I watched the light. It came and went. There seemed to be unusual difficulty in repeating the process which I had  so often seen; but it came at last, and I saw at Walla's feet  a man who was certainly not Maurice, nor yet the Doctor. He was crouching upon his hands and knees. By no human power could he have come unknown to me upon the  rock.

Breathlessly I watched him; saw him writhe and twist about as though in agony, and then at last rise up with a  spring and stand before me as perfect a man as I was myself.

One glance at his face was sufficient. It was a face yellow above and black below. There were those wondrous eyes gazing upon me with that same look of profound intelligence, that same calm assurance of power over me—over  us all. It was the man I had met at Panompin, it was my friend Mirrikh. Least of all I had expected this. Had help come to me from the realms of material space? Had my prayer been heard in Mars?

Then he spoke—spoke in phrases which proved most conclusively that he possessed the power to read my very  thoughts.

“Friend Wylde, I greet you!” he said, extending his hand, which I took in both of mine, finding it as surely flesh  and blood as my own. “Gradually you are progressing on the higher planes of Nature’s secrets. Know that time and space are but imaginary limitations. From the most distant of those glittering points above us I could come to you as  easily as I have come from my home in Mars."

I tried to reply, but my voice seemed to die away into an incoherent murmur.