| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: trees, perhaps to mark out the way; there the ashes of a fire, and
footprints in clayey spots; but nothing which appeared to belong to a
settled encampment.
The engineer had recommended his companions to refrain from hunting. The
reports of the firearms might give the alarm to the convicts, who were,
perhaps, roaming through the forest. Moreover, the hunters would
necessarily ramble some distance from the cart, which it was dangerous to
leave unguarded.
In the afterpart of the day, when about six miles from Granite House,
their progress became much more difficult. In order to make their way
through some thickets, they were obliged to cut down trees. Before entering
The Mysterious Island |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: the queer stench which now seemed to trickle down from the sealed
upper spaces. It was, he said, exactly like a smell he had found
in the toolshed abandoned when the house was finally repaired;
and like the faint odours which he sometimes thought he caught
near the stone circle on the mountains. Dunwich folk read the
stories when they appeared, and grinned over the obvious mistakes.
They wondered, too, why the writers made so much of the fact that
Old Whateley always paid for his cattle in gold pieces of extremely
ancient date. The Whateleys had received their visitors with ill-concealed
distaste, though they did not dare court further publicity by
a violent resistance or refusal to talk.
The Dunwich Horror |
