n!...

As he lay shaking, terrified (uncertain as to whether he were a soul
in torment or a human being still alive), and debating as to whether
he could get off the couch, relight the candle, and close the windward
window, he heard a sound that caused his heart to miss a beat and his
hair to rise on end. A strange, dry rustle merged in the sound of
paper being dragged across the floor, and he knew that he _was_ shut
in with a snake, shut up in a _blue room_, cut off from the matches on
the table, and doomed to lie and await the Death he dreaded more than
ten thousand others--or, going mad, to rush upon that Death.

_He was shut in with the SNAKE_. At last it had come for him in its
own concrete form and had him bound and gagged by fascination and
fear--in the Dark, the awful cruel Dark. No more mere myrmidons. _The
SNAKE ITSELF_.

He tried to scream and could not. He tried to strike out at an
imaginary serpent-head, huge as an elephant, that reared itself above
him--and could not.

He could not even draw his bare foot in under the overcoat. And
steadily the paper dragged across the floor ... Was it approaching?
Was it progressing round and round by the walls? Would the Snake find
the bed and climb on to it? Would it coil round his throat and gaze
with-luminescent eyes into his, and torture him thus for hours ere
thrusting its fangs into his brain? Would it coil up and sleep upon
his body for hours before doing so, knowing that he could not move?
Here were his Snake-Dreams realized, and in the actual flesh he lay
awake and conscious, and could neither move nor cry aloud!

In the Dark he lay bound and gagged, in a blue-walled room, and the
Snake enveloped him with its Presence, and he could in no wise save
himself.

Oh, God, why let a sentient creature suffer thus? He himself would
have shot any human being guilty of inflicting a tithe of the agony on
a pariah dog. There could _be_ no God!... and then the beams of the
rising moon fell upon the blade of the Sword, making it shine like a
lamp, and, with a roar as of a charging lion, Damocles de Warrenne
sprang from the bed, seized it by the hilt, and was aware, without a
tremor, of a cobra that reared itself before him in the moonlight,
swaying in the Dance of Death.

With a mere flick of the sword he laid the reptile twitching on the
floor--and for a few minutes was madder with Joy than ever in his life
he had been with Fear.

_For Fear was gone. The World of W