again close into mine across the firelight and began to speak in a very
earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness and pluck, his apparent
control of the situation. This man I had for years deemed unimaginative,
stolid!

"Now listen," he said. "The only thing for us to do is to go on as though
nothing had happened, follow our usual habits, go to bed, and so forth;
pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question wholly of the
mind, and the less we think about them the better our chance of escape.
Above all, don't think, for what you think happens!"

"All right," I managed to reply, simply breathless with his words and the
strangeness of it all; "all right, I'll try, but tell me one more thing
first. Tell me what you make of those hollows in the ground all about us,
those sand-funnels?"

"No!" he cried, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. "I dare not,
simply dare not, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed I am
glad. Don't try to. They have put it into my mind; try your hardest to
prevent their putting it into yours."

He sank his voice again to a whisper before he finished, and I did not
press him to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me as
I could hold. The conversation came to an end, and we smoked our pipes
busily in silence.

Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way is
when the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small thing
for a brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I chanced to
look down at my sand-shoe--the sort we used for the canoe--and something to