with the distant mournful rhythm of the endless beat of surf on shore.

Women clutched at their breasts now; men's knuckles went white beneath
the tight-drawn skin; the children drew behind their mothers' skirts
and, terror-stricken, cried aloud. Surcharged, on the edge, the bare and
ragged edge of frenzy now was every man and woman in the crowd. It was a
sight, a spectacle that racked them in every fibre of their beings, that
stirred them to pity, to hope, to fear, until the awful misery of this
blighted and crawling thing was their own in its every twitch of
agony--that struck them with a terror, the greater because it was
indefinable, a prescience, a reaching out beyond human realm, the
invoking of a supernal power--the thought of which very power, once
loosed, chilled them with panic-dread.

Yet still they watched--it was beyond their power to turn their
eyes--enthralled, a moaning, swaying, rocking mob, they watched. Madness
was creeping upon them rampant. Like a mighty tide, the ocean weight
behind it, hurling itself against flood-gates that could never stand, it
mounted higher and higher; and already, as the water first seeps between
the gates, grim forecast of what was to come, it showed itself now in
that long, sobbing, convulsive inhalation, in that strange, sinuous,
restless movement.

On went the Flopper. There was still a yard to go--two feet--_one_.
Stopped in a sudden deathless hush was all sound. The Flopper flung
himself forward upon his face at the Patriarch's feet. Stopped was all
movement, haggard and tense every face, strained every eye. For a moment
that seemed to span eternity, in a huddled heap, that crippled, twisted
thing lay there before them motionless, without sign of life--the
venerable face above it, still intent, still listening, turned slowly