nerves must have quieted a bit; for I remember being sufficiently aware
of my feelings, to realize that the muscles of my shoulders _ached_, with
the way that they must have been contracted, as I sat there, hunching
myself, rigid. Mind you, I was still in a disgusting funk; but what I
might call the 'imminent sense of danger' seemed to have eased from
around me; at any rate, I felt, in some curious fashion, that there was a
respite--a temporary cessation of malignity from about me. It is
impossible to word my feelings more clearly to you, for I cannot see them
more clearly than this, myself.

"Yet, you must not picture me as sitting there, free from strain; for the
nerve tension was so great that my heart action was a little out of
normal control, the blood beat making a dull booming at times in my ears,
with the result that I had the sensation that I could not hear acutely.
This is a simply beastly feeling, especially under such circumstances.

"I was sitting like this, listening, as I might say with body and soul,
when suddenly I got that hideous conviction again that something was
moving in the air of the place. The feeling seemed to stiffen me, as I
sat, and my head appeared to tighten, as if all the scalp had grown
_tense_. This was so real, that I suffered an actual pain, most peculiar
and at the same time intense; the whole head pained. I had a fierce
desire to cover my face again with my mailed arms, but I fought it off.
If I had given way then to that, I should simply have bunked straight out
of the place. I sat and sweated coldly (that's the bald truth), with the
'creep' busy at my spine....

"And then, abruptly, once more I thought I heard the sound of that huge,
soft tread on the aisle, and this time closer to me. There was an awful
little silence, during which I had the feeling that something enormous