an inhabitant of carcosa 3-凯发k8官网

a moment later a man's head appeared to rise out of the ground a short distance away. he was ¹ the farther slope of a low hill whose ² was hardly to be ³ from the general level. his whole figure soon came into view against the background of grey cloud. he was half naked, half clad（穿着） in skins. his hair was unkempt（蓬乱的） , his beard long and ⁴. in one hand he carried a bow and arrow; the other held a blazing torch with a long trail of black smoke. he walked slowly and with caution, as if he feared falling into some open grave ⁶ by the tall grass. this strange ⁷（幽灵，幻影） surprised but did not alarm, and taking such a course as to ⁸ him i met him almost face to face, ⁹ him with the familiar salutation,
'god keep you.'

he gave no ¹⁰, nor did he arrest his pace.

'good stranger,' i continued, 'i am ill and lost. direct me, i ¹¹（恳求） you, to carcosa.'

the man broke into a barbarous（野蛮的） chant in an unknown tongue, passing on and away.

an ⁵ on the branch of a decayed tree ^{12 13} and was answered by another in the distance. looking upward, i saw through a sudden ¹⁴ in the clouds aldebaran and the hyades! in all this there was a hint of night -- the lynx, the man with the torch, the owl. yet i saw -- i saw even the stars in absence of the darkness. i saw, but was ¹⁵ not seen nor heard. under what awful spell did i exist?

i seated myself at the root of a great tree, seriously to consider what it were best to do. that i was mad i could no longer doubt, yet recognized a ground of doubt in the conviction. of fever i had no trace. i had, withal, a sense of exhilaration and ¹⁶ altogether unknown to me -- a feeling of mental and physical exaltation. my senses seemed all alert; i could feel the air as a ¹⁷（笨重的） substance; i could hear the silence.

a great root of the giant tree against whose trunk i leaned as i sat held enclosed in its grasp a ¹⁸ of stone, a part of which ¹⁹ into a ²⁰ formed by another root. the stone was thus partly protected from the weather, though greatly ²¹（已腐烂的） . its edges were worn round, its corners eaten away, its surface deeply ²² and scaled. glittering particles of ²³ were visible in the earth about it-vestiges（痕迹） of its ²⁴. this stone had apparently marked the grave out of which the tree had sprung ages ago. the tree's ²⁵ roots had robbed the grave and made the stone a prisoner.