All was blackness and
chaos. Around him, as he passed them, he saw that dark suns were
burning, but there was nothing to conduct their light, and they shed
no radiance on the horrors of their world. Below him was an abyss in
which countless souls were struggling, blindly, helplessly, until they
should again be called to duty in some sphere of material existence.
The stillness at first was deathlike, oppressive; but soon he became
aware of a dull, hissing noise, such as is produced on earth by the
fusion of metals. The invisible furnaces were lost in the impenetrable
darkness, but the heat was terrific; the internal fires of earth or
those of the Bible's hell must be sickly and pale in comparison with
this awful, invisible atmosphere of flame. Now and then a planet,
which, obeying Nature's laws even here, revolved around its mockery
of a sun, fell at his feet a river of fire. There was stillness
no longer. The roaring and the exploding of the fusing metals, or
whatever it might be, filled the vast region like the hoarse cries
of wild beasts and the hissing of angry serpents.
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