ing flow
of opal water into a circular tunnel. I could not have moved my eyes had
I possessed the power: they devoured the fearful, beautiful things that
grew slowly, slowly larger, fixed on me, advancing, growing more
beautiful, the white flakes of light sweeping more swiftly into the
blazing vortices, the awful fascination deepening in its insane
intensity as the white, vibrating eyes grew nearer, larger.

Like a hideous and implacable engine of death the eyes of the unknown
Horror swelled and expanded until they were close before me, enormous,
terrible, and I felt a slow, cold, wet breath propelled with mechanical
regularity against my face, enveloping me in its fetid mist, in its
charnel-house deadliness.

With ordinary fear goes always a physical terror, but with me in the
presence of this unspeakable Thing was only the utter and awful terror
of the mind, the mad fear of a prolonged and ghostly nightmare. Again
and again I tried to shriek, to make some noise, but physically I was
utterly dead. I could only feel myself go mad with the terror of hideous
death. The eyes were close on me,--their movement so swift that they
seemed to be but palpitating flames, the dead breath was around me like
the depths of the deepest sea.

Suddenly a wet, icy mouth, like that of a dead cuttle-fish, shapeless,
jelly-like, fell over mine. The horror began slowly to draw my life from
me, but, as enormous and shuddering folds of palpitating jelly swept
sinuously around me, my will came back, my body awoke with the reaction
of final fear, and I closed with the nameless death that enfolded me.

What was it that I was fighting? My arms sunk through the unresisting
mass that was turning me to ice. Moment by moment new folds of cold
jelly swept round me, crushing me with the force of Titans. I fought to
wrest my mouth from this awful Thing that sealed it, but, if ever I
succeeded and caught a single breath, the wet, sucking mass closed over
my face again before I could cry out. I think I fought for hours,
desperately, insanely, in a silence that was more hideous than any
sound,--fought until I felt final death at hand, until the memory of all
my life rushed over me like a flood, until I no longer had strength to
wrench my face from that hellish succubus, until with a last mechanical
struggle I fell and yielded to death.

* * * * *

Then I heard a voice say, "If he is dead, I can never forgive myself; I
wa