Past all these gorgeous lands the malodorous ship flew unwholesomely, urged by the abnormal strokes of those unseen rowers below. And before the day was done Carter saw that the steersman could have no other goal than the Basalt Pillars of the West, beyond which simple folk say splendid Cathuria lies, but which wise dreamers well know are the gates of a monstrous cataract, wherein the oceans of earth's dreamland drop wholly to abnormal nothingness and shoot through the empty spaces towards other worlds and and empty stars and the awful voids outside the ordered universe where the daemon-sultan Azazoth gnaws hungrily in chaos amid pounding and piping and the hellish dancing of the other gods, blind, voiceless, tenebrous, and mindless, with their soul and messenger Nyarlathotep.