mell grew. I was nearly unnerved at my proximity to a
nameless thing at the bottom of a pit.

Suddenly my spade struck something softer than earth. I shuddered, and
made a motion as if to climb out of the hole, which was now as deep as
my neck. Then courage returned, and I scraped away more dirt in the
light of the electric torch I had provided. The surface I uncovered was
fishy and glassy--a kind of semi-putrid congealed jelly with suggestions
of translucency. I scraped further, and saw that it had form. There was
a rift where a part of the substance was folded over. The exposed area
was huge and roughly cylindrical; like a mammoth soft blue-white
stovepipe doubled in two, its largest part some two feet in diameter.
Still more I scraped, and then abruptly I leaped out of the hole and
away from the filthy thing; frantically unstopping and tilting the heavy
carboys, and precipitating their corrosive contents one after another
down that charnel gulf and upon the unthinkable abnormality whose titan
_elbow_ I had seen.

* * * * *

The blinding maelstrom of greenish-yellow vapor which surged
tempestuously up from that hole as the floods of acid descended, will
never leave my memory. All along the hill people tell of the yellow day,
when virulent and horrible fumes arose from the factory waste dumped in
the Providence River, but I know how mistaken they are as to the source.
They tell, too, of the hideous roar which at the same time came from
some disordered water-pipe or gas main underground--but again I could
correct them if I dared. It was unspeakably shocking, and I do not see
how I lived through it. I did faint after emptying the fourth carboy,
which I had to handle after the fumes had begun to penetrate my mask;
but when I recovered I saw that the hole was emitting no fresh vapors.

The two remaining carboys I emptied down without particular result, and
after a time I felt it safe to shovel the earth back into the pit. It
was twilight before I was done, but fear had gone out of the place. The
dampness was less fetid, and all the strange fungi had withered to a
kind of harmless grayish powder which blew ash-like along the floor. One
of earth's nethermost terrors had perished for ever; and if there be a
hell, it had received at last the demon soul of an unhallowed thing. And
as I patted down the last spadeful of mold, I shed the first of the many
tears with which I have paid unaffected tr