visions she was soothing him to rest in the still midnight, as he lay in
feverish pain, but a few hours after she had drawn him back from death.

Then the great tarantula she had slain seemed to come into her slumbers.
She saw the upheaval of the broad book under which it lay crushed, and
the hideous thing step slowly forth; and as it did so it spread itself
out, black, gigantic, to ten times its original size. It advanced to
the side of the bed, and leaped up on to the counterpane and crouched
there, glowering at her with its dull black eyes, its great hairy
feelers moving, its nippers working threateningly. She felt as one
under a demoniacal spell, without even power of movement enough to
tremble. Then she feared no longer for herself, for that which the
grisly monster threatened seemed to be her absent lover. Now she sees
him, sees him faintly and dimly as through darkness; and he, too, is
unconscious. It is as though she sees him in a grave, amid the gloomy
shadows of the nether world, far down in the dim depths of the black
river of Death.

And now it seems that the whole room is full of shadowy, hairy shapes,
like that which holds her in its demoniacal spell, that the dim darkness
is astir with writhing tentacular legs, and they are closing round
something--the pale countenance of a sleeping man. There is the glare
of blood in their eager eyes, and oh, Heaven! the face of each crawling
horror is a human one, dark, savage, bloodthirsty. And he?--Oh, God!
oh, God! The countenance of him who now sleeps there, ready for their
blood-drinking fangs, is that of her absent lover! She can almost touch
him, yet the terrible spell upon her holds her bound. Horror of
horrors! she must snatch him again from this grisly peril or he is lost.
Too late! too late! no, not yet too late--one moment will do it! This
chain that holds her, can she not break it? If she is powerless to
touch him, still can she cry aloud in warning? No, she cannot. The
gnome-like fiend crouching there has power over every faculty she
possesses. Now these appalling shapes are upon the sleeping man, and
now their eyes dart fire as from flaming torches. They seem to burn
him, for he moves uneasily. Will he not wake? will he not wake? Too
late! Then by some means the spell is broken, and with a wild, ringing,
piercing cry, she utters aloud her lover's name in a clarion call of
warning, and adjuration, and despair.

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