“Steady!” whispered the voice of John Silence in my ear, and I looked up with a start to see that the Colonel had risen from his chair.  The doctor rose too.  I followed suit, and for the first time saw down into the bowl.  To my amazement and horror I saw that the contents were troubled.  The blood was astir with movement.

The rest of the experiment was witnessed by us standing.  It came, too, with a curious suddenness.  There was no more dreaming, for me at any rate.

I shall never forget the figure of Colonel Wragge standing there beside me, upright and unshaken, squarely planted on his feet, looking about him, puzzled beyond belief, yet full of a fighting anger.  Framed by the white walls, the red glow of the lamps upon his streaming cheeks, his eyes glowing against the deathly pallor of his skin, breathing hard and making convulsive efforts of hands and body to keep himself under control, his whole being roused to the point of savage fighting, yet with nothing visible to get at anywhere—­he stood there, immovable against odds.  And the strange contrast of the pale skin and the burning face I had never seen before, or wish to see again.

But what has left an even sharper impression on my memory was the blackness that then began crawling over his face, obliterating the features, concealing their human outline, and hiding him inch by inch from view.  This was my first realisation that the process of materialisation was at work.  His visage became shrouded.  I moved from one side to the other to keep him in view, and it was only then I understood that, properly speaking, the blackness was not upon the countenance of Colonel Wragge, but that something had inserted itself between me and him, thus screening his face with the effect of a dark veil.  Something that apparently rose through the floor was passing slowly into the air above the table and above the bowl.  The blood in the bowl, moreover, was considerably less than before.

And, with this change in the air before us, there came at the same time a further change, I thought, in the face of the soldier.  One-half was turned towards the red lamps, while the other caught the pale illumination of the moonlight falling aslant from the high windows, so that it was difficult to estimate this change with accuracy of detail.  But it seemed to me that, while the features—­eyes, nose, mouth—­remained the same, the life informing them had undergone some profound transformation.  The signature of a new power had crept into the face and left its traces there—­an expression dark, and in some unexplained way, terrible.

Then suddenly he opened his mouth and spoke, and the sound of this changed voice, deep and musical though it was, made me cold and set my heart beating with uncomfortable rapidity.  The Being, as he had dreaded, was already in control of his brain, using his mouth.

“I see a blackness like the blackness of Egypt before my face,” said the tones of this unknown voice that seemed half his own and half another’s.  “And out of this darkness they come, they come.”