the heads of some of the creepers were ghostly
phosphorescent lights, which winked on and off at intervals
as the stems waved gently to and fro. I did not have an
instinctive fear of these. They seemed friendly. They lit up
the black depths. They and I seemed of a similar bent; they
feared the forms that I feared and contracted tight to the
bottom when these enemies approached. There were certain
permanent spots about me that gave off other lights at
intervals. The whole bottom was a dim, vast region of
many-coloured lights, or more properly, dim lambent glows, of
blue, green and yellow, which winked and nodded on and off in
the blackness. They seemed to be the decoys of the feeders
that possessed them. Each glow lit up a circle in the depths
and seemed to attract food to the watcher who waved it. They
were all cold lights, mere phosphorescent gleams without the
searching, penetrating qualities of the light I had first
felt, and they did not bother me.

"... The ray was filtering down again. It was this that kept
me alive. It increased until all above was a wan grey. One by
one the many-coloured lights of the bottom winked off, the
long feelers and contractile stems were drawn in, and the
whole bottom became once more a motionless, dead-grey
world.... Little sacks without eyes in that grey light, the
gorging not begun, kept alive by the whip of fear. The low
life would have gone on to death or dissemination had it not
been for exterior forces which reached me in the shape of
Fear. I shall never forget it--the Fear of the Black Bottoms.

"There was a long, hideous suspense, as the Ray held me, and
the thing that I feared was not the Ray, but belonged with
it. In the midst of a kind of freezing paralysis, the
struggle to flee arose within me. Yet I was without means of
locomotion. Through sheer intensity of panic I expanded. Then
there was a thrusting forward of the inner vital centre
against the forward wall of the sack. It was the most vital
part of me that was thrust forward, the heart of a rudiment,
so to speak. That which remained, followed in a kind of flow.
The movement was an undulation forward, brought about by the
terror to escape.

"Fear is always connected with Behind. With the approach of
Danger I had started _fo