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- Стр. 12/38
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The
sailor
Larsen
was
first
to
spy
the
jagged
line
of
witchlike
cones
and
pinnacles
ahead
,
and
his
shouts
sent
everyone
to
the
windows
of
the
great
cabined
plane
.
Despite
our
speed
,
they
were
very
slow
in
gaining
prominence
;
hence
we
knew
that
they
must
be
infinitely
far
off
,
and
visible
only
because
of
their
abnormal
height
.
Little
by
little
,
however
,
they
rose
grimly
into
the
western
sky
;
allowing
us
to
distinguish
various
bare
,
bleak
,
blackish
summits
,
and
to
catch
the
curious
sense
of
fantasy
which
they
inspired
as
seen
in
the
reddish
antarctic
light
against
the
provocative
background
of
iridescent
ice-dust
clouds
.
In
the
whole
spectacle
there
was
a
persistent
,
pervasive
hint
of
stupendous
secrecy
and
potential
revelation
.
It
was
as
if
these
stark
,
nightmare
spires
marked
the
pylons
of
a
frightful
gateway
into
forbidden
spheres
of
dream
,
and
complex
gulfs
of
remote
time
,
space
,
and
ultra-dimensionality
.
I
could
not
help
feeling
that
they
were
evil
things
--
mountains
of
madness
whose
farther
slopes
looked
out
over
some
accursed
ultimate
abyss
.
That
seething
,
half-luminous
cloud
background
held
ineffable
suggestions
of
a
vague
,
ethereal
beyondness
far
more
than
terrestrially
spatial
,
and
gave
appalling
reminders
of
the
utter
remoteness
,
separateness
,
desolation
,
and
aeon-long
death
of
this
untrodden
and
unfathomed
austral
world
.
It
was
young
Danforth
who
drew
our
notice
to
the
curious
regularities
of
the
higher
mountain
skyline
--
regularities
like
clinging
fragments
of
perfect
cubes
,
which
Lake
had
mentioned
in
his
messages
,
and
which
indeed
justified
his
comparison
with
the
dreamlike
suggestions
of
primordial
temple
ruins
,
on
cloudy
Asian
mountaintops
so
subtly
and
strangely
painted
by
Roerich
.
There
was
indeed
something
hauntingly
Roerich-like
about
this
whole
unearthly
continent
of
mountainous
mystery
.
I
had
felt
it
in
October
when
we
first
caught
sight
of
Victoria
Land
,
and
I
felt
it
afresh
now
.
I
felt
,
too
,
another
wave
of
uneasy
consciousness
of
Archaean
mythical
resemblances
;
of
how
disturbingly
this
lethal
realm
corresponded
to
the
evilly
famed
plateau
of
Leng
in
the
primal
writings
.
Mythologists
have
placed
Leng
in
Central
Asia
;
but
the
racial
memory
of
man
--
or
of
his
predecessors
--
is
long
,
and
it
may
well
be
that
certain
tales
have
come
down
from
lands
and
mountains
and
temples
of
horror
earlier
than
Asia
and
earlier
than
any
human
world
we
know
.
A
few
daring
mystics
have
hinted
at
a
prePleistocene
origin
for
the
fragmentary
Pnakotic
Manuscripts
,
and
have
suggested
that
the
devotees
of
Tsathoggua
were
as
alien
to
mankind
as
Tsathoggua
itself
.
Leng
,
wherever
in
space
or
time
it
might
brood
,
was
not
a
region
I
would
care
to
be
in
or
near
,
nor
did
I
relish
the
proximity
of
a
world
that
had
ever
bred
such
ambiguous
and
Archaean
monstrosities
as
those
Lake
had
just
mentioned
.
At
the
moment
I
felt
sorry
that
I
had
ever
read
the
abhorred
Necronomicon
,
or
talked
so
much
with
that
unpleasantly
erudite
folklorist
Wilmarth
at
the
university
.
This
mood
undoubtedly
served
to
aggravate
my
reaction
to
the
bizarre
mirage
which
burst
upon
us
from
the
increasingly
opalescent
zenith
as
we
drew
near
the
mountains
and
began
to
make
out
the
cumulative
undulations
of
the
foothills
.
I
had
seen
dozens
of
polar
mirages
during
the
preceding
weeks
,
some
of
them
quite
as
uncanny
and
fantastically
vivid
as
the
present
example
;
but
this
one
had
a
wholly
novel
and
obscure
quality
of
menacing
symbolism
,
and
I
shuddered
as
the
seething
labyrinth
of
fabulous
walls
and
towers
and
minarets
loomed
out
of
the
troubled
ice
vapors
above
our
heads
.
The
effect
was
that
of
a
Cyclopean
city
of
no
architecture
known
to
man
or
to
human
imagination
,
with
vast
aggregations
of
night-black
masonry
embodying
monstrous
perversions
of
geometrical
laws
.
There
were
truncated
cones
,
sometimes
terraced
or
fluted
,
surmounted
by
tall
cylindrical
shafts
here
and
there
bulbously
enlarged
and
often
capped
with
tiers
of
thinnish
scalloped
disks
;
and
strange
beetling
,
table-like
constructions
suggesting
piles
of
multitudinous
rectangular
slabs
or
circular
plates
or
five-pointed
stars
with
each
one
overlapping
the
one
beneath
.
There
were
composite
cones
and
pyramids
either
alone
or
surmounting
cylinders
or
cubes
or
flatter
truncated
cones
and
pyramids
,
and
occasional
needle-like
spires
in
curious
clusters
of
five
.
All
of
these
febrile
structures
seemed
knit
together
by
tubular
bridges
crossing
from
one
to
the
other
at
various
dizzy
heights
,
and
the
implied
scale
of
the
whole
was
terrifying
and
oppressive
in
its
sheer
gigantism
.
The
general
type
of
mirage
was
not
unlike
some
of
the
wilder
forms
observed
and
drawn
by
the
arctic
whaler
Scoresby
in
1820
,
but
at
this
time
and
place
,
with
those
dark
,
unknown
mountain
peaks
soaring
stupendously
ahead
,
that
anomalous
elder-world
discovery
in
our
minds
,
and
the
pall
of
probable
disaster
enveloping
the
greater
part
of
our
expedition
,
we
all
seemed
to
find
in
it
a
taint
of
latent
malignity
and
infinitely
evil
portent
.
I
was
glad
when
the
mirage
began
to
break
up
,
though
in
the
process
the
various
nightmare
turrets
and
cones
assumed
distorted
,
temporary
forms
of
even
vaster
hideousness
.
As
the
whole
illusion
dissolved
to
churning
opalescence
we
began
to
look
earthward
again
,
and
saw
that
our
journey
's
end
was
not
far
off
.
The
unknown
mountains
ahead
rose
dizzily
up
like
a
fearsome
rampart
of
giants
,
their
curious
regularities
showing
with
startling
clearness
even
without
a
field
glass
.
We
were
over
the
lowest
foothills
now
,
and
could
see
amidst
the
snow
,
ice
,
and
bare
patches
of
their
main
plateau
a
couple
of
darkish
spots
which
we
took
to
be
Lake
's
camp
and
boring
.
The
higher
foothills
shot
up
between
five
and
six
miles
away
,
forming
a
range
almost
distinct
from
the
terrifying
line
of
more
than
Himalayan
peaks
beyond
them
.
At
length
Ropes
--
the
student
who
had
relieved
McTighe
at
the
controls
--
began
to
head
downward
toward
the
left-hand
dark
spot
whose
size
marked
it
as
the
camp
.
As
he
did
so
,
McTighe
sent
out
the
last
uncensored
wireless
message
the
world
was
to
receive
from
our
expedition
.
Everyone
,
of
course
,
has
read
the
brief
and
unsatisfying
bulletins
of
the
rest
of
our
antarctic
sojourn
.
Some
hours
after
our
landing
we
sent
a
guarded
report
of
the
tragedy
we
found
,
and
reluctantly
announced
the
wiping
out
of
the
whole
Lake
party
by
the
frightful
wind
of
the
preceding
day
,
or
of
the
night
before
that
.
Eleven
known
dead
,
young
Gedney
missing
.
People
pardoned
our
hazy
lack
of
details
through
realization
of
the
shock
the
sad
event
must
have
caused
us
,
and
believed
us
when
we
explained
that
the
mangling
action
of
the
wind
had
rendered
all
eleven
bodies
unsuitable
for
transportation
outside
.
Indeed
,
I
flatter
myself
that
even
in
the
midst
of
our
distress
,
utter
bewilderment
,
and
soul-clutching
horror
,
we
scarcely
went
beyond
the
truth
in
any
specific
instance
.
The
tremendous
significance
lies
in
what
we
dared
not
tell
;
what
I
would
not
tell
now
but
for
the
need
of
warning
others
off
from
nameless
terrors
.
