By this time they had reached the borders of the thermal region. Remembering the lunar landscape of last night Dikon thought that by day it looked only less strange. There, in the distance, the geyser’s jet was, for a flash of time, erected like a plume in the air. Here, the path threaded its way between quaking ulcers; there, the white flags drooped from their iron standards. There, too, on the crest of the mound above Taupo-tapu, were Mr Webley’s men, black figures against a sombre background, figures that stooped, thrust downwards, and then laboriously lifted.

‘One can’t believe in things like this,’ said Dikon under his breath.

Mr Falls had very sharp ears. ‘Horrible, isn’t it?’ he said. And again it was impossible to find in his voice the colour of his thoughts. He waved his stick. ‘The whole place,’ he said, ‘is impossibly Doréesque, don’t you feel?’

‘I find it so difficult to believe that it’s entirely impersonal.’

‘The Maori people make no attempt to do so, I understand.’

Now they had drawn close to the mound. Dikon said to himself: ‘It is nothing. Falls will hand over Webley’s authority and we shall walk quickly over the mound. I shall look at the path between Falls’s feet and my feet and in a moment it will begin to lead downhill. And then I shall know that my back is turned to Taupo-tapu. It is nothing.’

But as they climbed the mound the distance between them widened and Dikon didn’t hear what Falls said to the men. Why were they waiting? Why this long mumbled colloquy? He looked up. The path was steep on that side of the mound and his eyes were on a level with the men’s knees.

‘Can’t we get on with it?’ he heard himself say angrily.

One of the men pushed past him and stumbled down the path. Falls said: ‘Wait a moment, Bell.’ The man who had blundered down the path began to make retching noises.

The men on the top of the mound—there were two of them now beside Falls—squatted close to each other as if they held a corroboree. One of them let go a pitchfork he held and it rattled down the path. Falls stood up. His back was towards the light but Dikon saw that his face had bleached. He said: ‘Come on, Bell.’ Although Dikon desired most passionately to turn and escape by the path along which they had come, his muscles sent him forward.

It would have been much worse, of course, if they hadn’t covered it, but, though the sack was thick, it was wet. It followed the shape beneath it in a hard eloquent curve. Dikon’s imagination found sockets in the shadows beneath the curve. One of the men must have pushed him forward.