green sparks from the brook, when closely watched, could be
distinguished individually, each one wavering up toward the clouds,
but the moment they got within them a fearful struggle seemed to
begin. The spark endeavoured to escape through to the upper air,
while the clouds concentrated around it whichever way it darted,
trying to create so dense a prison that further movement would be
impossible. As far as Maskull could detect, most of the sparks
succeeded eventually in finding their way out after frantic efforts;
but one that he was looking at was caught, and what happened was
this. A complete ring of cloud surrounded it, and, in spite of its
furious leaps and flashes in all directions--as if it were a live,
savage creature caught in a net--nowhere could it find an opening,
but it dragged the enveloping cloud stuff with it, wherever it went.
The vapours continued to thicken around it, until they resembled the
black, heavy, compressed sky masses seen before a bad thunderstorm.
Then the green spark, which was still visible in the interior, ceased
its efforts, and remained for a time quite quiescent. The cloud
shape went on consolidating itself, and became nearly spherical; as
it grew heavier and stiller, it started slowly to descend toward the
valley floor. When it was directly opposite Maskull, with its lower
end only a few feet off the ground, its motion stopped altogether and
there was a complete pause for at least two minutes. Suddenly, like
a stab of forked lightning, the great cloud shot together, became
small, indented, and coloured, and as a plant-animal started walking
around on legs and rooting up the ground in search of food. The
concluding stage of the phenomenon he witnessed with his normal
eyesight. It showed him the creature's appearing miraculously out of
nowhere.

Maskull was shaken. His cynicism dropped from him and gave place to