irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight. And now from
these globules themselves as from the shell of an egg, monstrous things
burst out; the air grew filled with them; larvæ so bloodless and so
hideous that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader
of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes
in a drop of water--things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each
other, devouring each other--forms like nought ever beheld by the naked
eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were
without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came
round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my
head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary
command against all evil beings.

Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them; invisible hands
touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold soft fingers at my throat.
I was still equally conscious that if I gave way to fear I should be in
bodily peril; and I concentrated all my faculties in the single focus of
resisting, stubborn will. And I turned my sight from the Shadow--above
all, from those strange serpent eyes--eyes that had now become
distinctly visible. For there, though in nought else around me, I was
aware that there was a _will_, and a will of intense, creative, working
evil, which might crush down my own.

The pale atmosphere in the room began now to redden as if in the air of
some near conflagration. The larvæ grew lurid as things that live in
fire. Again the room vibrated; again were heard the three measured
knocks; and again all things were swallowed up in the darkness of the
dark Shadow, as if out of that darkness all had come, into that darkness
all returned.