ty. It was we who were the cause of the
disturbance, and my brain filled to bursting with stories and legends of
the spirits and deities of places that have been acknowledged and
worshipped by men in all ages of the world's history. But, before I could
arrive at any possible explanation, something impelled me to go farther
out, and I crept forward on the sand and stood upright. I felt the ground
still warm under my bare feet; the wind tore at my hair and face; and the
sound of the river burst upon my ears with a sudden roar. These things, I
knew, were real, and proved that my senses were acting normally. Yet the
figures still rose from earth to heaven, silent, majestically, in a great
spiral of grace and strength that overwhelmed me at length with a genuine
deep emotion of worship. I felt that I must fall down and
worship--absolutely worship.

Perhaps in another minute I might have done so, when a gust of wind swept
against me with such force that it blew me sideways, and I nearly stumbled
and fell. It seemed to shake the dream violently out of me. At least it
gave me another point of view somehow. The figures still remained, still
ascended into heaven from the heart of the night, but my reason at last
began to assert itself. It must be a subjective experience, I argued--none
the less real for that, but still subjective. The moonlight and the
branches combined to work out these pictures upon the mirror of my
imagination, and for some reason I projected them outwards and made them
appear objective. I knew this must be the case, of course. I took courage,
and began to move forward across the open patches of sand. By Jove, though,
was it all hallucination? Was it merely subjective? Did not my reason argue
in the old futile way from the little standard of the known?

I only know that great column of figures ascended darkly into the sky for
what seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete measure of
reality as most men are accustomed to gauge reality. Then suddenly they
were gone!

And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great presence
had passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush. The esoteric meaning
of this lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up within me, and I began
to tremble dreadfully. I took a quick look round--a look of horror that
came near to panic--calculating vainly ways of escape; and then, realizing
how helpless I was to achieve anything really effective, I crep