How should a glass box restrain the Fiend that had made his life a
Hell upon earth? What did Steynker and Colfe and these others--all
gaping at him open-mouthed--know of the Devil with whom he had
wrestled deep beneath the Pit itself for ten thousand centuries of
horror--centuries whose every moment was an aeon?

What could these innocent men and boys know of the living Damnation
that made him pray to die--provided only that he could be _really_
dead and finished, beyond all consciousness and fear. The fools!... to
think that it was a harmless, concrete thing. It would emerge in a
moment like the Fisherman's Geni from the Brass Bottle and grow as big
as the world. He felt he was going mad again.

"Help!" he suddenly shrieked. "_It is under my foot. It is moving ...
moving ... moving out_." He sprang to his astounded friend, Delorme,
and screamed to him for help--and then realizing that there was _no_
help, that neither man nor God could save him, he fled from the room
screaming like a wounded horse.

Rushing madly down the corridor, falling head-long down the stone
stairs, bolting blindly across the entrance-hall, he fled until
(unaware of his portly presence up to the moment when he rebounded
from him as a cricket-ball from a net) he violently encountered the
Head.

Scrambling beneath his gown the demented boy flung his arms around the
massy pillar of the Doctor's leg, and prayed aloud to him for help,
between heart-rending screams.