It was an hour, that just before midnight, when the southern end of that great island-mass of structures that is New York lies beneath a silence and a loneliness supernatural, almost. So it seemed to Worley, at least, strolling southward in the warm spring night through the silent streets, from one pool of corner lamplight to another, between the towering, vast buildings that loomed into the darkness on either side. Those buildings, the center of unparalleled activity in the hours of day, lay as silent beneath the white spring stars as though they were the still unbroken ruins of some mighty, deserted city. Northward, from the midtown section, a glow of light against the sky told of the life that still surged through the crowded streets there, but Worley, strolling on, met none save an occasional policeman who eyed him keenly beneath the corner lights. Then within moments more puffs of fresh salt air came to his nostrils, and he was passing out between the last of the great buildings, out beneath the looming tracks of the elevated and into the silent little park.
As Worley tells it, he had strolled half-way across the darkened park, toward its southern sea-wall's rail, before he sensed that anything unusual lay before him. The gleaming waters stretching out into the darkness, the gliding lights of small craft here and there upon them, the other far-flung blinking lights of Brooklyn and the Jersey cities, away to left and to right—these were all that engrossed his attention in those first moments. Then, as he drew within yards of the southern rail, he stopped abruptly short. He had glimpsed, suddenly, a great glistening wet mass that lay at the sea-wall's edge, ahead of him, and that seemed to be slowly moving.
"It was," he says, "just as though someone had dumped a great mass of glistening gelatin at the park's edge, wet and gleaming there in the light of the few scattered bulbs about me. All along the park's edge, along its sea-wall, that glistening mass stretched, hanging down over the wall into the lapping sea-waters, and as the stuff seemed slowly moving I thought it for that moment to be pouring down into the sea beneath. Then as I stood there, gazing at that smooth-flowing movement of the gleaming stuff, I saw something that made me rub my eyes in amazement. The glistening masses were not flowing down into the sea at all, I saw, but instead were flowing up from it!"
For a moment of utter astonishment Worley stood still, gazing toward the stuff. A gray, glistening mass, it was pouring slowly and smoothly up over the wall's edge, from the sea beneath, flowing steadily up onto the surface of the park and adding to the great, gleaming mass of the stuff that lay already all around that park's sea-edge! The thing was unprecedented; it was incredible, and for a moment that seemed unending to Worley, he stared toward those shining, gathering jelly-like masses that were flowing and flexing and writhing a few feet before him. Then suddenly a great, thick loop of the glistening jelly—a great arm—projected itself out from the gliding masses and darted straight toward him!
It was that that finally broke the spell of Worley's stupefaction, for as the great arm looped toward him he staggered back, giving unconscious utterance to a high scream. At that same moment of utter horror, he says, by some strange trick of the mind there had flashed across his brain remembrance of the feebly moving clear slime that had been found on beach and sea-wall in the last days, but that fleeting thought dissolved for the moment in the stark horror that now filled him. Another great looping arm had shot out beside the first, lengthening smoothly and swiftly toward him, while the gliding, jelly-like masses from which both projected were flowing toward him, across grass and paving—great glistening, amorphous bulks a full yard in height, now, gathering greater bulk each moment by the masses that still were flowing up from the waters over the park's wall to add to them. Worley, though, had seen this in but a single dazed glimpse, for as the second arm had shot toward him he had stumbled backward again, crying out, and then was running weakly toward the park's north end.
From beneath the overhung elevated tracks, as he ran toward them, there leapt to meet him two blue-coated figures, one with a pistol gleaming in his hand, and at sight of the policeman whom his cries had summoned Worley became incoherent in his horror.
"Coming out of the water over the park!" he could only tell them hoarsely, gesturing toward the southern end. "Gray jelly-stuff—protoplasm like it said in the newspapers—masses of it coming out——"
The two surveyed him doubtfully a moment, then, peering into the darkness at the park's lower end, began to walk slowly in that direction, their weapons outstretched. His heart pounding rapidly Worley watched them vanishing into the darkness. There was a moment of silence, a silence in which the rattle of a train far to the north came preternaturally loudly to his ears. Then he heard a sudden sharp exclamation from the darkness southward, and the next moment the darkness was split by a spurt of flame and the deafening rattle of shots. Then, against the gleaming waters beyond, he glimpsed great arms flashing upward like dark, mighty tentacles, and as they flashed down again the shots ceased, there were sharp screams, suddenly cut off, and then silence again. Worley, trembling, gazed still down into the little park, and after a moment saw movement there, a slow movement approaching him. Finally it came within the radiance of the nearer lights, and he saw that it was the great, glistening, gray masses, flowing smoothly across the park toward him, flowing up as smoothly still from the waters around it, and that in the clear, jelly-like bulk gliding toward him were held, like flies in amber, the dark, twisted bodies of two men!
With that sight a daze of horror settled upon Worley's brain. He was dimly aware that he was racing unsteadily northward from the park, through the darkened, silent streets, that from somewhere else behind him were coming other screams, the high screams of a woman, this time, and that from away across the waters to the east had come suddenly other faint, agonized cries. He heard as though from a great distance a sudden babel of shouts and screams that swept along the great city's edges like spreading flame, heard bells jangling suddenly out to add to that uproar. By then he had staggered eastward into the district of his own lodgings, moved by unconscious habit, but as he stumbled down one of those narrow streets eastward a sudden rising uproar a few blocks ahead of him brought him to a stand-still. Then, the first swirling mists of horror lifting from his brain, he stared down along the narrow street.