1 It had become a place of darkness.
2 The North Pole was one of these places, I remember.
3 You couldn't imagine a more deadly place for a shipwreck.
4 So as soon as I could I made a start for a place thirty miles higher up.
5 The camps of these people surrounded the place, and the chiefs came every day to see him.
6 But the warning could not have been meant for the place where it could be only found after approach.
7 Other places were scattered about the Equator, and in every sort of latitude all over the two hemispheres.
8 A neglected gap was all the gate it had, and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show.
9 You remember I told you I had been struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place.
10 It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places.
11 The pilgrims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored.
12 And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
13 I asked myself what I was doing there, with a sensation of panic in my heart as though I had blundered into a place of cruel and absurd mysteries not fit for a human being to behold.
14 It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.