yself that I
could guard our strange treasure as well from there as from elsewhere
... slipped off into a profound sleep.

Nothing approaching in acute and sustained horror to the moment when
next I opened my eyes exists in all my memories of those days.

In the first place I was aroused by the shaking of the bed. It was
quivering beneath me as though an earthquake disturbed the very
foundations of the building. I sprang upright and into full
consciousness of my lapse.... My hands clutching the coverlet on
either side of me, I sat staring, staring, staring ... at _that_ which
peered at me over the foot of the bed.

I knew that I had slept at my post; I was convinced that I was now
widely awake; yet I _dared_ not admit to myself that what I saw was
other than a product of my imagination. I dared not admit the physical
quivering of the bed, for I could not, with sanity, believe its cause
to be anything human. But what I saw, yet could not credit seeing,
was this:

A ghostly white face, which seemed to glisten in some faint reflected
light from the sitting-room beyond, peered over the bedrail; gibbered
at me demoniacally. With quivering hands this night-mare horror, which
had intruded where I believed human intrusion to be all but impossible,
clutched the bed-posts so that the frame of the structure shook and
faintly rattled....

My heart leapt wildly in my breast, then seemed to suspend its
pulsations and to grow icily cold. My whole body became chilled
horrifically. My scalp tingled: I felt that I must either cry out or
become stark, raving mad!

For this clammily white face, those staring eyes, that wordless
gibbering, and the shaking, shaking, shaking of the bed in the clutch
of the nameless visitant--prevailed, refused to disperse like the evil
dream I had hoped it all to be; manifested itself, indubitably, as
something tangible--objective....

Outraged reason deprived me of coherent speech. Past the clammy white
face I could see the sitting-room illuminated by a faint light; I
could even see the Tulun-Nur box upon the table immediately opposite
the door.

The thing which shook the bed was actual, existent--to be counted with!

Further and further I drew myself away from it, until I crouched close
up against the head of the bed. Then, as the thing reeled aside, and--
merciful Heaven!--made as if to come around and approach me yet closer,
I uttered a hoarse cry and hurled myself out upon the floor and on th