“Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me.”

“It was some time before I could summon resolution to go down through the trees and bushes upon the flank of the headland to the beach. At last I did it at a run; and as I emerged from the thicket upon the sand, I heard some other body come crashing after me. At that I completely lost my head with fear, and began running along the sand. Forthwith there came the swift patter of soft feet in pursuit. I gave a wild cry, and redoubled my pace. Some dim, black things about three or four times the size of rabbits went running or hopping up from the beach towards the bushes as I passed.”

“Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far myexperience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense ofdetachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it allfrom the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time,out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feelingwas very strong upon me that night. Here was another side to mydream.”

“…growing a little tiresome on account of some mysterious internal discomfort that the local practitioner diagnosed as imagination”

“Nothing endures, nothing is precise and certain (except the mind of a pedant), perfection is the mere repudiation of that ineluctable marginal inexactitude which is the mysterious inmost quality of Being”

“One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction – nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead.”

“He began to realize that you cannot even fight happily with creatures that stand upon a different mental basis to yourself.”