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When beautiful, spirited Finnula Crais kidnaps the dashing knight Hugh Fitzstephen, she has no idea that she's ensnared the new Earl of Stephensgate on his way home from the Crusades. Nor does she realise that Hugh is quite happy to be kidnapped by an enchanting tomboy, and will do anything it takes to avoid being rescued. With Finnula determined to hold Hugh to ransom, and Hugh equally determined to steal Finnula's heart, it isn't long before the fireworks start! And just when it looks as if there might be a happy ending, disaster strikes. When an attempt is made on the new Earl's life, there is only one suspect - and even if he loves her dearly, Hugh can't let her get away with it . . .

Then, like a noise from a different world, came the opening of the doorand the sound of boots on the doormat, and I saw, silhouetted againstthe greyness of the night in the open doorway, a figure which Irecognised as Ransom. The speaking which was not a voice came again outof the rod of light: and Ransom, instead of moving, stood still andanswered it. Both speeches were in a strange polysyllabic language whichI had not heard before. I make no attempt to excuse the feelings whichawoke in me when I heard the unhuman sound addressing my friend and myfriend answering it in the unhuman language. They are, in fact,inexcusable; but if you think they are improbable at such a juncture, Imust tell you plainly that you have read neither history nor your ownheart to much effect. They were feelings of resentment, horror, andjealousy. It was in my mind to shout out, "Leave your familiar alone,you damned magician, and attend to Me."

Words are slow. You must not lose sight of the fact that his whole lifeon Venus up till now had lasted less than five minutes. He was not inthe least tired, and not yet seriously alarmed as to his power ofsurviving in such a world. He had confidence in those who had sent himthere, and for the meantime the coolness of the water and the freedom ofhis limbs were still a novelty and a delight; but more than all thesewas something else at which I have already hinted and which can hardlybe put into words--the strange sense of excessive pleasure which seemedsomehow to be communicated to him through all his senses at once. I usethe word "excessive" because Ransom himself could only describe it bysaying that for his first few days on Perelandra he was haunted, not bya feeling of guilt, but by surprise that he had no such feeling. Therewas an exuberance or prodigality of sweetness about the mere act ofliving which our race finds it difficult not to associate with forbiddenand extravagant actions. Yet it is a violent world too. Hardly had helost sight of the floating object when his eyes were stabbed by anunendurable light. A grading, blue-to-violet illumination made thegolden sky seem dark by comparison and in a moment of time revealed moreof the new planet than he had yet seen. He saw the waste of waves spreadillimitably before him, and far, far away, at the very end of the world,against the sky, a single smooth column of ghastly green standing up,the one thing fixed and vertical in this universe of shifting slopes.Then the rich twilight rushed back (now seeming almost darkness) and heheard thunder. But it has a different timbre from terrestrial thunder,more resonance, and even, when distant, a kind of tinkling. It is thelaugh, rather than the roar, of heaven. Another flash followed, andanother, and then the storm was all about him. Enormous purple cloudscame driving between him and the golden sky, and with no preliminarydrops a rain such as he had never experienced began to fall. There wereno lines in it; the water above him seemed only less continuous than thesea, and he found it difficult to breathe. The flashes were incessant.In between them, when he looked in any direction except that of theclouds, he saw a completely changed world. It was like being at thecentre of a rainbow, or in a cloud of multi-coloured steam. The waterwhich now filled the air was turning sea and sky into a bedlam offlaming and writhing transparencies. He was dazzled and now for thefirst time a little frightened. In the flashes he saw, as before, onlythe endless sea and the still green column at the end of the world. Noland anywhere--not the suggestion of a shore from one horizon to theother.

He rose and got a second shower from a bubble-tree. This made him feelso fresh and alert that he began to think of food. He had forgottenwhereabouts on the island the yellow gourds were to be found, and as heset out to look for them he discovered that it was difficult to walk.For a moment he wondered whether the liquid in the bubbles had someintoxicating quality, but a glance around assured him of the realreason. The plain of copper-coloured heather before him, even as hewatched, swelled into a low hill and the low hill moved in hisdirection. Spellbound anew at the sight of land rolling towards him,like water, in a wave, he forgot to adjust himself to the movement andlost his feet. Picking himself up, he proceeded more carefully. Thistime there was no doubt about it. The sea was rising. Where twoneighbouring woods made a vista to the edge of this living raft he couldsee troubled water, and the warm wind was now strong enough to rufflehis hair. He made his way gingerly towards the coast, but before hereached it he passed some bushes which carried a rich crop of oval greenberries, about three times the size of almonds. He picked one and brokeit in two. The flesh was dryish and bread-like, something of the samekind as a banana. It turned out to be good to eat. It did not give theorgiastic and almost alarming pleasure of the gourds, but rather thespecific pleasure of plain food--the delight of munching and beingnourished, a "Sober certainty of waking bliss." A man, or at least a manlike Ransom, felt he ought to say grace over it; and so he presentlydid. The gourds would have required rather an oratorio or a mysticalmeditation. But the meal had its unexpected high lights. Every now andthen one struck a berry which had a bright red centre: and these were sosavoury, so memorable among a thousand tastes, that he would have begunto look for them and to feed on them only, but that he was once moreforbidden by that same inner adviser which had already spoken to himtwice since he came to Perelandra. "Now on earth," thought Ransom,"they'd soon discover how to breed these redhearts, and they'd cost agreat deal more than the others." Money, in fact, would provide themeans of saying encore in a voice that could not be disobeyed.

Ransom could have danced with impatience. Already it was visibly darkerand there was no doubt now that the distance between the islands wasincreasing. Just as he was about to speak again a wave rose between themand once more she was out of sight; and as that wave hung above him,shining purple in the light of the sunset, he noticed how dark the skybeyond it had become. It was already through a kind of twilight that helooked down from the next ridge upon the other island far below him. Heflung himself into the water. For some seconds he found a difficulty ingetting clear of the shore. Then he seemed to succeed and struck out.Almost at once he found himself back again among the red weeds andbladders. A moment or two of violent struggling followed and then he wasfree--and swimming steadily--and then, almost without warning, swimming intotal darkness. He swam on, but despair of finding the other land, oreven of saving his life, now gripped him. The perpetual change of thegreat swell abolished all sense of direction. It could only be by chancethat he would land anywhere. Indeed, he judged from the time he hadalready been in the water that he must have been swimming along thespace between the islands instead of across it. He tried to alter hiscourse; then doubted the wisdom of this, tried to return to his originalcourse, and became so confused that he could not be sure he had doneeither. He kept on telling himself that he must keep his head. He wasbeginning to be tired. He gave up all attempts to guide himself.Suddenly, a long time after, he felt vegetation sliding past him. Hegripped and pulled. Delicious smells of fruit and flowers came to himout of the darkness. He pulled harder still on his aching arms. Finallyhe found himself, safe and panting, on the dry, sweet-scented,undulating surface of an island.

"The majestic spectacle of this blind, inarticulate purposivenessthrusting its way upward and ever upward in an endless unity ofdifferentiated achievements towards an ever-increasing complexity oforganisation, towards spontaneity and spirituality, swept away all myold conception of a duty to Man as such. Man in himself is nothing. Theforward movement of Life--the growing spirituality--is everything. I sayto you quite freely, Ransom, that I should have been wrong inliquidating the Malacandrians. It was a mere prejudice that made meprefer our own race to theirs. To spread spirituality, not to spread thehuman race, is henceforth my mission. This sets the coping-stone on mycareer. I worked first for myself; then for science; then for humanity;but now at last for Spirit itself--I might say, borrowing language whichwill be more familiar to you, the Holy Spirit."

It was on those lines that the enemy now worked almost exclusively.Though the Lady had no word for Duty he had made it appear to her in thelight of a Duty that she should continue to fondle the idea ofdisobedience, and convinced her that it would be a cowardice if sherepulsed him. The ideas of the Great Deed, of the Great Risk, of a kindof martyrdom, were presented to her every day, varied in a thousandforms. The notion of waiting to ask the King before a decision was madehad been unobtrusively shuffled aside. Any such "cowardice" was now notto be thought of. The whole point of her action--the whole grandeur--wouldlie in taking it without the King's knowledge, in leaving him utterlyfree to repudiate it, so that all the benefits should be his, and allthe risks hers; and with the risk, of course, all the magnanimity, thepathos, the tragedy, and the originality. And also, the Tempter hinted,it would be no use asking the King, for he would certainly not approvethe action: men were like that. The King must be forced to be free. Now,while she was on her own--now or never--the noble thing must be achieved;and with that "Now or never" he began to play on a fear which the Ladyapparently shared with the women of earth--the fear that life might bewasted, some great opportunity let slip. "How if I were as a tree thatcould have born gourds and yet bore none," she said. Ransom tried toconvince her that children were fruit enough. But the Un-man askedwhether this elaborate division of the human race into two sexes couldpossibly be meant for no other purpose than offspring?--a matter whichmight have been more simply provided for, as it was in many of theplants. A moment later it was explaining that men like Ransom in his ownworld--men of that intensely male and backward-looking type who alwaysshrank away from the new good--had continuously laboured to keep womandown to mere child-bearing and to ignore the high destiny for whichMaleldil had actually created her. It told her that such men had alreadydone incalculable harm. Let her look to it that nothing of the sorthappened on Perelandra. It was at this stage that it began to teach hermany new words: words like Creative and Intuition and Spiritual. Butthat was one of its false steps. When she had at last been made tounderstand what "creative" meant she forgot all about the Great Risk andthe tragic loneliness and laughed for a whole minute on end. Finally shetold the Un-man that it was younger even than Piebald, and sent themboth away. 2b1af7f3a8

Ransom My Heart Read Online Free =LINK= Download

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