he canon.

XIV

AN ADVENTURE IN THE NIGHT

Ten seconds after entering the arroyo I was stumbling along in an
absolute blackness. It almost seemed to me that I could reach out my
hands and touch it, as one would touch a wall. Or perhaps not exactly
that, for a wall is hard, and this darkness was soft and yielding,
in the manner of enveloping hangings. Directly above me was a narrow,
jagged, and irregular strip of sky with stars. I splashed in the
brook, finding its waters strangely warm, rustled through the grasses,
my head back, chin out, hands extended as one makes his way through
a house at night. There were no sounds except the tinkle of the
sulphurous stream: successive bends in the canon wall had shut off
even the faintest echoes of the bacchanalia on the beach.

The way seemed much longer than by daylight. Already in my calculation
I had traversed many times the distance, when, with a jump at the
heart, I made out a glow ahead, and in front of it the upright logs
of the stockade.

To my surprise the gate was open. I ascended the gentle slope to the
valley's level--and stumbled over a man lying prostrate, shivering
violently, and moaning.

I bent over to discover whom it might be. As I did so a brilliant
light seemed to fill the valley, throwing an illumination on the man
at my feet. I saw it was the Nigger, and perceived at the same instant
that he was almost beside himself with terror. His eyes rolled, his
teeth chattered, his frame contracted in a strong convulsion, and the
black of his complexion had faded to a washed-out dirty grey,
revolting to contemplate. He felt my touch and sprang to his feet,
clutching me by the shoulder as a man clutching rescue.

"My Gawd!" he shivered. "Look! Dar it is again!"

He fell to pattering in a tongue unknown to me--charms, spells,
undoubtedly, to exorcise the devils that had hold of him. I followed
the direction of his gaze, and myself cried out.

The doctor's laboratory stood in plain sight between the two columns
of steam blown straight upward through the stillness of the evening.
It seemed bursting with light. Every little crack leaked it in
generous streams, while the main illumination appeared fairly to bulge
the walls outward. This was in itself nothing extraordinary, and
indicated only the activity of those within, but while I looked an
irregular patch of incandescence suddenly splashed the cliff opposite.
For a single instant the very substance of