tone fizz with
another--nitrochloric, or hydrochloric, I think. So I knew enough not
to be frightened--at least not very badly. But what I saw next scared
me stiff. I don't hide the fact. And so it would have scared you!

_There was something on the lawn, dabbling among the shiny glimmer of
the uprooted lily plots, crouching and scratching!_

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE THING THAT SCRATCHED

Something living it was, and pretty active, too--no mistake about that.
A dog? Possibly! But the next moment it stood erect on two feet like
a man, and, turning slowly, peered all about. Then as suddenly it
dropped down on all fours again and fell to the scraping. I could hear
the sound distinctly in that lonesome place, where the water in the
pond was too thick and heavy even to ripple, and where only the owl
cried regularly once in five minutes.

I could not have spoken if I had tried, and I did not try. My tongue
dried up like a piece of old bark, and I knew what the Bible meant when
it said that sometimes a fellow's tongue clave to the roof of his
mouth. Mine would, if the roof had not been as dry as a chip also.

You ask if I watched the Thing. You may take it for gospel that I
could not have turned my head or averted my eyes for all the wealth of
the Indies, though that, I understand, is a poor country enough.

Well, I saw the Thing scramble from grave to empty grave, scratch at
each furiously, obscuring the dim phosphorescent glimmer. Then,
standing erect, it flung up great clawlike hands with a ghoulish
gesture of disappointment, moaning lamentably to the stars!

I tell you I dripped. My body trembled so that it shook the tree. So
would yours have done, if you had been there--perhaps even a bigger
tree.

Then some noise from the opposite side of the Moat, or, perhaps, from
beyond the Pond, struck the ear of the Thing. I don't know how a
spectre disappears. I never saw but that one, and since then I have
lost all interest. But at any rate the Shape passed me at a long
wolf's lope, making no noise and going fast. Right under my nose it
slipped silently into the black deeps of the Pond. I think it sank
underneath, for the next moment I could see no more than a wet head, a
round, vague sphere that glistened faintly, turning this way and that,
and very ghastly. _The Thing was swimming, and making no noise_.

Then I came to myself with a sudden revulsion. If there were, indeed,
anything living on that