Scarcely had I swallowed it, when a curiously light, dizzy sensation overcame me, and the figure of Heliobas standing before me seemed to assume gigantic proportions.

I saw his hands extend--his eyes, like lamps of electric flame, burned through and through me--and like a distant echo, I heard the deep vibrating tones of his voice uttering the following words: "Azul! Azul! Lift up this light and daring spirit unto thyself; be its pioneer upon the path it must pursue; suffer it to float untrammelled through the wide and glorious Continents of Air; give it form and force to alight on any of the vast and beautiful spheres it may desire to behold; and if worthy, permit it to gaze, if only for a brief interval, upon the supreme vision of the First and Last of worlds.

By the force thou givest unto me, I free this soul; do thou, Azul, quickly receive it!" A dense darkness now grew thickly around me---I lost all power over my limbs--I felt myself being lifted up forcibly and rapidly, up, up, into some illimitable, terrible space of blackness and nothingness.

I could not think, move, or cry out--I could only feel that I was rising, rising, steadily, swiftly, breathlessly ...

when suddenly a long quivering flash of radiance, like the fragment of a rainbow, struck dazzlingly across my sight.