V + 

The Invisible Bridge + 

I had now resolved to go forward while I had the use of daylight to guide me. Yet, so pliable is the human mind, I felt already the reluctance with which a man must take farewell of familiar things, to face the perils of a homeless way. + 

I glanced again at my companion of an hour, and with a more detailed consideration than I had previously given. + 

Slim and graceful still, the body curved in death. + 

Very close and soft was the fur that covered her, silver-grey on the back, but changing forward into a deepening chestnut. The legs were well and finely shaped, but below the knee of each there was a slender snakelike appendage, ending with curving fingers, like a tiny monkey’s hand, which could close round the opposite limb and bind them together. The feet also were delicately shaped, but deeply slit into three webbed toes, of which the central one was the longest. Others⁠—one at each side⁠—set far back, were curled up normally, but could open sideways with a thumb-like claw. The feet were furred equally with the legs, the silver-grey of the undersides lying so closely that it looked almost like a shining skin. They showed no sign of damage from the long rough journey that I knew they had made, nor was any road-dust upon them. + 

The limbs were coloured in the same way as the body⁠—silver-grey behind and chestnut-brown before, and the hands were almost human, but for the webbing which had shown between the open fingers. + 

The head was to me the most singular, being furred like the body, and of a similar colouring. The eyes were of a very human quality, and I had seen them to be alert and intelligent. Now they were covered by a heavy lid which rose upward, and in its turn was protected by a thin film which closed down, and was lashed like a human eyelid. The ears were set far back, and were covered by a furry flap which could be closed at will to shut out air or water. + 

The mouth was lipless, a thin slit, with no sign of teeth. The cheeks were covered by retractile pads beneath which was a gill-like device for water-breathing. + 

The tail, which could curl up beneath the body till it was practically invisible, was forked, with two more of those tiny monkey-hands at its extremities. + 

I saw, or guessed, these details and their significance imperfectly at the time⁠—the more so for my pledge not to touch the abandoned body⁠—but it was evident that it was adapted for land or water living with almost equal excellence. + 

I recognised that the novelty of what I saw was not surprising, but rather that there was so little structural change in the form of animal life over so long a period of earthly time. Still there was the vertebrate body, the limbs, the head; still a general similarity of external and, presumably, of internal organs. + 

I looked at the sinuous, graceful body, and wondered what it was that repelled me. + 

To an impartial intelligence it might be considered more beautiful than even an ideal human body, and the ideal in the human race is not the majority. + 

Surely, it was more so than the average of our domestic animals. + 

Was it the unfamiliarity only, or was it the doubt of humanity, which repelled me? + 

But repulsion, from whatever cause, was countered by a very different feeling, which made my feet slow as I left the cave, and my glance go backward. + 

Then I turned resolutely to the task which I had undertaken. + 

The day was very still. There was no cry or motion from the great cliff-height above me. There was no flying life that crossed the unbroken blue. The forest had stilled its fear, and the monstrous growths were sprawling open upon the steaming soil. I wondered what control it might be which held them so far backward that none could reach a deadly arm across the path I kept. Perhaps the nearer soil was too shallow for the growth they needed. + 

I went forward in this quiet peace for about four hours, stopping twice to eat from the store I carried, which I found, though only semiliquid at the centre, had a gratifying quality of quenching thirst almost with the first mouthful. I suppose it to have been formed largely of water, as many solids are, and to have been soluble to digestion to an unusual degree. But it is a matter which I have no competence to decide. + 

I know that I must have covered more than twelve miles in the first four hours, with times for rest included⁠ ⁠… and then came the abyss. + 

The cliff-wall ended, and ran back in a black and barren hill, immense and desolate in the daylight. + 

The forest ended abruptly on the edge of a chasm so deep that, though it must have been nearly a quarter of a mile to the further side, the great depth made it look narrow. + 

Far below, dim and snakelike in the distance, a great river wound, between deep shelving banks that looked moss-grown, but were covered with (perhaps familiar) trees. + 

I stood upon the edge, which sank like a wall, and I saw no possible way to go forward, or to clamber down. + 

I knew that there was a way which I had been meant to take, and more than once I walked from side to side of the path on which I stood, bending perilously over an edge which fell almost sheer to not less than five-thousand feet below. + 

As I did this, the rope-like tentacle, which I was carrying over my shoulder, slipped forward. I made one effort to clutch it; then, conscious of my peril, let it go, but I was overbalanced already. With an involuntary cry, that echoed and reechoed through the barren heights, I fell forward. + 