m the ever-breaking, ever-reforming
pyramid below the chute, poured around his thighs, immobolising him.

A frenzy of terror suddenly leaped to life within him. The horror of
death, the Fear of The Trap, shook him like a dry reed. Shouting, he
tore himself free of the wheat and once more scrambled and struggled
towards the hatchway. He stumbled as he reached it and fell directly
beneath the pour. Like a storm of small shot, mercilessly, pitilessly,
the unnumbered multitude of hurtling grains flagellated and beat and
tore his flesh. Blood streamed from his forehead and, thickening with
the powder-like chaff-dust, blinded his eyes. He struggled to his feet
once more. An avalanche from the cone of wheat buried him to his thighs.
He was forced back and back and back, beating the air, falling, rising,
howling for aid. He could no longer see; his eyes, crammed with dust,
smarted as if transfixed with needles whenever he opened them. His mouth
was full of the dust, his lips were dry with it; thirst tortured him,
while his outcries choked and gagged in his rasped throat.

And all the while without stop, incessantly, inexorably, the wheat, as
if moving with a force all its own, shot downward in a prolonged roar,
persistent, steady, inevitable.

He retreated to a far corner of the hold and sat down with his back
against the iron hull of the ship and tried to collect his thoughts, to
calm himself. Surely there must be some way of escape; surely he was not
to die like this, die in this dreadful substance that was neither solid
nor fluid. What was he to do? How make himself heard?

But even as he thought about this, the cone under the chute broke again
and sent a great layer of grain rippling and tumbling toward him. It
reached him where he sat and buried his hand and one foot.

He sprang up trembling and made for another corner.

"By God," he cried, "by God, I must think of something pretty quick!"

Once more the level of the wheat rose and the grains began piling deeper
about him. Once more he retreated. Once more he crawled staggering to
the foot of the cataract, screaming till his ears sang and his eyeballs
strained in their sockets, and once more the relentless tide drove him
back.

Then began that terrible dance of death; the man dodging, doubling,
squirming, hunted from one corner to another, the wheat slowly,
inexorably flowing, rising, spreading to every angle, to every nook
and cranny. It reached his middle. Furiou