LINDER

he crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out black against the lemon yellow of the sky--a couple of hundred people, perhaps. There were raised vo

ack! Ke

running t

ssed; "a-screwin' and a-screwin' out. I

o or three hundred people elbowing and jostling one another,

in the pit!"

ck!" sai

ay through. Every one seemed greatly excited.

se idiots back. We don't know what's

e he was, standing on the cylinder and trying to scram

ed onto the top of the screw. I turned, and as I did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of the cylinder fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion. I stu

I presently saw something stirring within the shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two luminous disks--like eyes. Then something rese

e edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate exclamations on all sides. There was a general movement backwards. I saw the shopman struggling still

as rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it b

one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whol

outh, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth--above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes--were at o

pit, with a thud like the fall of a great mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar thick cr

ees, perhaps a hundred yards away; but I ran slantingly and

gravel at the edge of the pit in which they lay. And then, with a renewed horror, I saw a round, black object bobbing up and down on the edge of the pit. It was the head of the shopman who had fallen in, but showing as a little black object against the hot west

ultitude of perhaps a hundred people or more standing in a great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes, behind gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in short, excited shouts, and staring, staring har