s the three watched and listened; "of
the wonderful love and care of a merciful God, who controls all
things--who has given me my defects, and my capacity for loving, and
then placed Myra Gaunt in my way. Is there mercy to me in this? As part
of a great evolutionary principle, which develops the race life at the
expense of the individual, it might be consistent with the idea of a
God--a first cause. But does the individual who perishes, because
unfitted to survive, owe any love, or gratitude to this God? He does
not! On the supposition that He exists, I deny it! And on the complete
lack of evidence that He does exist, I affirm to myself the integrity of
cause and effect--which is enough to explain the Universe, and me. A
merciful God--a kind, loving, just, and merciful God--" he burst into a
fit of incongruous laughter, which stopped short as he clapped his hands
to his stomach and then to his head. "What ails me?" he gasped; "I feel
as though I had swallowed hot coals--and my head--and my eyes--I can't
see." The pain left him in a moment and the laughter returned. "What's
wrong with the starboard anchor? It's moving. It's changing. It's
a--what? What on earth is it? On end--and the windlass--and the spare
anchors--and the davits--all alive--all moving."

The sight he saw would have been horrid to a healthy mind, but it only
moved this man to increased and uncontrollable merriment. The two rails
below leading to the stem had arisen before him in a shadowy triangle;
and within it were the deck-fittings he had mentioned. The windlass had
become a thing of horror, black and forbidding. The two end barrels were
the bulging, lightless eyes of a non-descript monster, for which the
cable chains had multiplied themselves into innumerable legs and
tentacles. And this thing was crawling around within the triangle. The
anchor-davits were many-headed serpents which danced on their tails, and
the anchors themselves writhed and squirmed in the shape of immense
hairy caterpillars, while faces appeared on the two white
lantern-towers--grinning and leering at him. With his hands on the
bridge rail, and tears streaming down his face, he laughed at the
strange sight, but did not speak; and the three, who had quietly
approached, drew back to await, while below on the promenade deck, the
little white figure, as though attracted by his laughter, turned into
the stairway leading to the upper deck.

The phantasmagoria faded to a blank wall of