ves
gazing down into a great, smooth valley, filled half way to the brim
with--what?

"As far as the eye could see stretched a level plain of ashy white,
faintly phosphorescent, a sea of velvet fog that lay like motionless
water, or rather like a floor of alabaster, so dense did it appear, so
seemingly capable of sustaining weight. If it were possible, I think
that sea of dead white mist struck even greater terror into my soul
than the heavy silence or the deadly cry--so ominous was it, so utterly
unreal, so phantasmal, so impossible, as it lay there like a dead ocean
under the steady stars. Yet through that mist _we must go_! there seemed
no other way home, and, shattered with abject fear, mad with the one
desire to get back, we started down the slope to where the sea of milky
mist ceased, sharp and distinct around the stems of the rough grass.

"I put one foot into the ghostly fog. A chill as of death struck through
me, stopping my heart, and I threw myself backward on the slope. At that
instant came again the shriek, close, close, right in our ears, in
ourselves, and far out across that damnable sea I saw the cold fog lift
like a water-spout and toss itself high in writhing convolutions towards
the sky. The stars began to grow dim as thick vapor swept across them,
and in the growing dark I saw a great, watery moon lift itself slowly
above the palpitating sea, vast and vague in the gathering mist.

"This was enough: we turned and fled along the margin of the white sea
that throbbed now with fitful motion below us, rising, rising, slowly
and steadily, driving us higher and higher up the side of the foothills.

"It was a race for life; that we knew. How we kept it up I cannot
understand, but we did, and at last we saw the white sea fall behind us
as we staggered up the end of the valley, and then down into a region
that we knew, and so into the old path. The last thing I remember was
hearing a strange voice, that of Nils, but horribly changed, stammer
brokenly, 'The dog is dead!' and then the whole world turned around
twice, slowly and resistlessly, and consciousness went out with a crash.

"It was some three weeks later, as I remember, that I awoke in my own
room, and found my mother sitting beside the bed. I could not think very
well at first, but as I slowly grew strong again, vague flashes of
recollection began to come to me, and little by little the whole
sequence of events of that awful night in the Dead Valle