He was like a man beaten
to a dazed state in which he expects anything, in which his feeble
resistance will not ward off a single blow aimed at him by an unseen,
inscrutable enemy.
Hollister, sitting on the bank of the river, looked at the mountains
rising tier upon tier until the farthest ranges were dazzling white
cones against a far sky line. He saw them as a chaos of granite and
sandstone flung up by blind forces. Order and logical sequence in the
universe were a delusion--except as they were the result of ordered
human thought, effected by patient, unremitting human effort, which
failed more often than it succeeded.
He looked at one bold peak across the valley, standing so sheer above
the Black Hole that it seemed to overhang from the perpendicular; a
mass of bald granite, steep cliff, with glacial ice and perpetual snow
lurking in its crevasses. Upon its lower slopes the forest ran up, a
green mantle with ragged edges. From the forest upward the wind wafted
seeds to every scanty patch of soil. They took root, became saplings,
grew to substantial trees.
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