But now he was aware that the fluctuating vapour about him was
something more than vapour, and the temerarious excitement of his first
essay was shot with fear. For he perceived, at first indistinctly,
and then suddenly very clearly, that he was surrounded by FACES!
that each roll and coil of the seeming cloud-stuff was a face.
And such faces! Faces of thin shadow, faces of gaseous tenuity.
Faces like those faces that glare with intolerable strangeness
upon the sleeper in the evil hours of his dreams. Evil, greedy eyes
that were full of a covetous curiosity, faces with knit brows and
snarling, smiling lips; their vague hands clutched at Mr. Bessel
as he passed, and the rest of their bodies was but an elusive streak
of trailing darkness. Never a word they said, never a sound from
the mouths that seemed to gibber. All about him they pressed in that
dreamy silence, passing freely through the dim mistiness that was
his body, gathering ever more numerously about him. And the shadowy
Mr. Bessel, now suddenly fear-stricken, drove through the silent,
active multitude of eyes and clutching hands.
So inhuman were these faces, so malignant their staring eyes,
and shadowy, clawing gestures, that it did not occur to Mr.
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