"Stiff!--wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him on his
head and he'd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course
this"--he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head--"is
quite different. And the little doctor--what was his name?"

"Smithers?"

"Smithers it was--was quite wrong in trying to fetch him round too soon,
according to all accounts. The things he did! Even now it makes me feel
all--ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly little
things, not dynamos--"

"Coils."

"Yes. You could see his muscles throb and jump, and he twisted about.
There were just two flaring yellow candles, and all the shadows were
shivering, and the little doctor nervous and putting on side, and
_him_--stark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made
me dream."

Pause.

"It's a strange state," said Warming.

"It's a sort of complete absence," said Isbister. "Here's the body,
empty. Not dead a bit, and yet not alive. It's like a seat vacant and
marked 'engaged.' No feeling, no digestion, no beating of the heart--not
a flutter. _That_ doesn't make me feel as if there was a man present. In
a sense it's more dead than death, for these doctors tell me that even