turned his mind to locomotion in this new body in which he found
himself. For a time he was unable to shift himself from his attachment
to his earthly carcass. For a time this new strange cloud body of his
simply swayed, contracted, expanded, coiled, and writhed with his
efforts to free himself, and then quite suddenly the link that bound
him snapped. For a moment everything was hidden by what appeared to be
whirling spheres of dark vapour, and then through a momentary gap he
saw his drooping body collapse limply, saw his lifeless head drop
sideways, and found he was driving along like a huge cloud in a strange
place of shadowy clouds that had the luminous intricacy of London
spread like a model below.

But now he was aware that the fluctuating vapour about him was
something more than vapour, and the temerarious excitement of his first
essay was shot with fear. For he perceived, at first indistinctly, and
then suddenly very clearly, that he was surrounded by faces! that each
roll and coil of the seeming cloud-stuff was a face. And such faces!
Faces of thin shadow, faces of gaseous tenuity. Faces like those faces
that glare with intolerable strangeness upon the sleeper in the evil
hours of his dreams. Evil, greedy eyes that were full of a covetous
curiosity, faces with knit brows and snarling, smiling lips; their
vague hands clutched at Mr. Bessel as he passed, and the rest of their
bodies was but an elusive streak of trailing darkness. Never a word
they said, never a sound from the mouths that seemed to gibber. All
about him they pressed in that dreamy silence, passing freely through
the dim mistiness that was his body, gathering ever more numerously
about him. And the shadowy Mr. Bessel, now suddenly fear-stricken,
drove through the silent, active multitude of eyes and clutching hands.

So inhuman were these faces, so malignant their staring eyes, and
shadowy, clawing gestures, that it did not occur to Mr. Bessel to
attempt intercourse with these drifting creatures. Idiot phantoms,
they seemed, children of vain desire, beings unborn and forbidden the
boon of being, whose only expressions and gestures told of the envy and
craving for life that was their one link with existence.

It says much for his resolution that, amidst the swarming cloud of
these noiseless spirits of evil, he could still think of Mr. Vincey.
He made a violent effort of will and found himself, he knew not how,
stooping towards Staple Inn