As I advanced in facility I was able to understand more and more of what my Loswem acquaintances said, though not to express myself to them in their tongue: they claimed not to understand me, and could not see the point of making the effort when a translator was at hand. I would have abandoned the undertaking, since several of my acquaintances were beginning to regard me as mentally disturbed, but I felt impelled to continue, though more discreetly, as a consequence of certain discoveries which seemed to me sinister. I discovered, in fine, that in all but the simplest utterances, the Loswem original differed in meaning, sometimes substantially, from the translator's version. This became particularly evident in all discussions concerning religion, local customs, marriage and family life, etc. To give an example of this, in listening to a recorded political conference between our representatives and theirs early in the year just past (in Loswem, obtained while there), I heard the translator say, "We must safeguard our territorial integrity," a familiar Loswem statement, but the speaker in fact had remarked (literally translated), "It requires itself that we others in no way mix our sacred blood," which is an entirely different thing. I found numerous other examples, and the more I pondered over them, the more I came to believe that the political differences between us, which grow daily more exacerbated, aredue to these mistranslations, for which, however, the translators cannot be blamed, since they are inherent in the nature of the two languages: and when this is compounded by the number of separate languages spoken in the world—I believe it is more than three thousand— the situation can only be seen as extremely grave. Yet the solution, if there is one, eludes me. The mobility of modern life requires that we come into constant contact with those who speak other languages, and it would be impossible for all of us to learn each other's tongues; in fact, without the invention and wide use of the translator, modern civilization would be impossible. The problem would be solved if everyone were to learn a single language, but if we cannot even agree with Loswem on the salinity of their efferent water, what chance have we of imposing the simplest and most convenient of all languages— our own, of course— on the whole world with its two hundred billion people?
For a long time he lay hearing the roar of water. Sometimes he lost interest and stopped attending to it, but when he came back again it was always there, distant, muted and not unpleasant. At intervals a large cold drop fell on his face or hand. He did not seem able to turn or cover his face, but this was not alarming, and in fact he forgot about it each time until the next drop reminded him. He opened his eyes, saw nothing but grayness, and closed them again. Presently the world grew lighter beyond his closed lids. He felt there was something he should remember, but could not. He opened his eyes and managed to sit up; he was dizzy and his head hurt. Now he remembered the other time, and he looked around for the box and his other belongings. They were all there, lying beside him on a sloping wet shelf of stone. The air was full of tiny droplets, and the stone was spattered with larger ones that fell now and again; his shirt and breeks were dripping, and he felt damp all over. Before him in the silvery light was a wide gray pool into which a curtain of water descended with a continual roar. The surface of the pool was boiling white; droplets flew and drifted in every direction. Waves surged up unceasingly on the shelf, breaking upon a few bare sticks that lay there. Behind him was a wet wall of rock, hollowed out and overhanging the shelf; what was above that he could not see. A few trailing ferns grew in the crannies of the rock, and there was moss deep in the recess.
When he tried to stand, he found himself so light that he overbalanced at once; his feet floated up while his head and shoulders went down. He tried again, steadying himself against the rock wall this time, and managed to stay up, though his foot on the wet stone had a disposition to drift out from under him. It cost him more effort and several absurdly slow falls to gather up his belongings and hang them about his shoulders. At length it occurred to him to take off his shoes and put them into his belt. Bare toes gave him better footing, and he began to work his way around the recess. As he followed the curve, the recess narrowed and he saw a strip of misty light at the end of the falling water. The rock shelf narrowed here, too, then pinched out altogether. There was nothing for it but to wade in the shallow water, on the submerged stone that was so slippery that he went down instantly in slow motion, floundered up and drifted down again, among white sprays of water that hung unnaturally in the air before they curved over and dripped to the surface again. Individual droplets fell in front of his nose, and he could see them changing shape as they moved—they were not teardrops as he had always supposed, but globes that were constantly deformed this way and that, pulsing and trembling as they fell. Thorinn watched them in amazement, too fascinated to think of getting up until they had all dropped into the water, each leaving its tiny peak and then subsiding among its slow ripples.
He found that the only way he could make any progress at all was to remain on all fours, not even crawling but hitching himself forward with sudden jerks of his arms and knees. Surges of water flung themselves at his face, and he had to close his mouth and eyes until they had struck and dripped slowly away. In this manner he moved forward a few ells, feeling like a drowned worm, until a gravel beach appeared between the cliff and the water. Here he could stand again, and next came a jumble of boulders that was even better. He was wet through, and cold—it was colder here than anywhere he had been in the Underworld, and it struck him now that it might be true after all about the regions of eternal ice at the bottom of the world. As he moved forward, he could see vague shapes in the mist that might have been trunks of slender trees. Remembering his experience with the demons, he went cautiously, pausing often to listen. The boulders decreased in size; bare earth began to appear between them, then a tangle of damp stalks and vines. Out of prudence Thorinn stopped and put his shoes on, but the footing here was almost as bad as in the water, and he had to go on his belly again, gripping the vines to draw himself forward. This was a better way of moving than any he had found yet, and he could have moved faster still were it not that he was alarmed by the way his body floated away from the ground whenever he pulled too vigorously.
Something dark lay athwart his path. Thorinn approached it cautiously and found it was a dead tree-trunk, spongy and half rotten. The peeling bark was reddish-gray, like that of a larch, but it was divided into vertical segments with pointed tops and bottoms. Although he was shivering with cold, Thorinn suppressed the impulse to build a fire. He passed the log and went on up the slope, avoiding the upright shapes—they appeared to be limbless trees, in fact, but the last thing he wanted was to climb a tree whose top was invisible.