ut what it was he could not for a long time recollect.
Then suddenly there came before his eyes that ghastly closing scene at
dusk on the Sant plateau--Spadevil's crushed and bloody features and
Tydomin's dying sighs.... He shuddered convulsively, and felt sick.

The peculiar moral outlook that had dictated these brutal murders had
departed from him during the night, and now he recognised what he
had done! During the whole of the previous day he seemed to have
been labouring under a series of heavy enchantments. First Oceaxe had
enslaved him, then Tydomin, then Spadevil, and lastly Catice. They
had forced him to murder and violate; he had guessed nothing, but had
imagined that he was travelling as a free and enlightened stranger.
What was this nightmare journey for--and would it continue, in the same
way?...

The silence of the forest was so intense that he heard no sound except
the pumping of blood through his arteries.

Putting his hand to his face, he found that his remaining probe had
disappeared and that he was in possession of three eyes. The third eye
was on his forehead, where the old sorb had been. He could not guess its
use. He still had his third arm, but it was nerveless.

Now he puzzled his head for a long time, trying unsuccessfully to recall
that name which had been the last word spoken by Catice.

He got up, with the intention of resuming his journey. He had no toilet
to make, and no meal to prepare. The forest was tremendous. The nearest
tree appeared to him to have a circumference of at least a hundred feet.
Other dim boles looked equally large. But what gave the scene its aspect
of immensity was the vast spaces separating tree from tree. It was
like some gigantic, supernatural hall in a life after death. The
lowest branches were fifty yards or more from the ground. There was
no underbrush; the soil was carpeted only by the dead, wet leaves. He
looked all around him, to find his direction, but the cliffs of Sant,
which he had descended, were invisible--every way was like every other
way, he had no idea which quarter to attack. He grew frightened, and
muttered to himself. Craning his neck back, he stared upward and
tried to discover the points of the compass from the direction of the
sunlight, but it was impossible.

While he was standing there, anxious and hesitating, he heard the drum
taps. The rhythmical beats proceeded from some distance off. The unseen
drummer seemed to be marching through th