"They were beasts like the purple lizard. Some of 'em were worse. I killed one that was like a giant hoptoad with fangs."
"I've seen 'em like that.... 'Ere, wotcher giving us? I know them 'orrors is all in my mind. I ain't no common lushington. I knows it's the gin. I know they're folks like everyone."
"Oh, you know, do you? Open up that walnut you call your mind, chum. Why do we both see the identical brutes, if they're in your mind?"
"I dunno," he growled sullenly.
"Then just sit quiet—there's the gin beside you—and I'll explain it all in words of one syllable."
And this I did. I went over the whole frightful business, with a side dissertation on the theory of a fourth dimension. Then I went over it again. Somewhere in the distance a clock struck two. I summarized it again. I could see it beginning to penetrate to his submerged intellect. I went through it all a fourth time, and his murky gaze began to glow. The far-away clock struck three.
"'Ere," he said at last. "You ain't loony at all, are yer? Tell me agayn about them as is in it wiff yer."
"There's an old Colonel, a real big gun in his day, with pots of money. There's two veterans, gentlemen both, and one the son of a lord. There's a doctor with plenty of brains, and an old chap with more dignity than you ever saw in your misspent life. There's even a girl, a real lady. And there's me. Do you think we'd all be chucking our lives into this mess if we didn't know it was desperately real?"
He scratched his nose with a black nail. "No," he said, "no, you wouldn't. I can see as you're real clarss, ripper or no. What d'yer want of me, though? I'm plain dirt compared wiff you."